Astounding v45n01 (1950 03) (cape1736)

DATIONS
. Shiras

NEW FQIi
by Wilmar

trail Maze* • • • •

y&touncfiko

SCIENCE FICTION

Reg. U. S. Pat. Off.

CONTENTS

MARCH, 1950 VOL. XLV, NO. 1

NOVELETTES

NEW FOUNDATIONS, by Wilmar FI. Shiras 5

THE MERCENARIES, by H. Beam Piper 57

SHORT STORIES

REGULATIONS PROVIDE, by Raymond F. Jones ...... 39

CONFORMITY EXPECTED, by H . B. Fyjc 140

SERIAL

TO THE STARS, by L. Ron Hubbard 78

(Conclusion)

j ARTICLE

OUR TURBULENT ATMOSPHERE, by Willy Ley 124

I (Part One of Two Parts)

READERS’ DEPARTMENTS

THE EDITOR’S PAGE 4

IN TIMES TO COME . . . . . . 38

i THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY 138

BRASS TACKS * 154

Editor

JOHN W. CAMPBELL, JR.

Assistant Editor

C. TARRAN T

COVER BY ROGERS

Illustrations by Brush, Cartier, Orban and Rogers
The editorial contents have not been published before, are protected by copyright and can-
not be reprinted without publishers' permission. All stories in this magazine are fiction.
No actual persons are designated by name or character. Any similarity is coincidental.
Monthly publication issued by Street & Smith Publications, Incorporated at 775 Lidgerwood
Avenue, Elizabeth, New Jersey. Reentered as Second Class matter October 19, 1948 at the
Post Office at Elizabeth, New Jersey, under Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. Copyright,
1950, in U. S. A. and Great Britain by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Gerald H. Smith,

| President; Henry W. Ralston, Vice-President and Secretary; Thomas H. Kaiser, Treasurer.

Subscriptions to Countries in Pan American Union, $2.75 per year; $3.00 per year in Canada,
elsewhere, $3.25 per year. All subscriptions should be addressed to P.O. Box 494, Elizabeth,
N. J. We cannot accept responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork. Any material
| submitted" must include return postage.

General and Executive offices at 122 East 42nd Street, New York 17, New York.

$2.50 per Year In U. S. A. Printed in 16 the U. S. A. 25c per Copy

NEXT ISSUE ON SALE MARCH 17, 1950

AST-1 S

OF HUMAN MEMORY

Coming up, and now in prepara-
tion, is an article concerning a new
science of human thought —dianetics.
L. Ron Hubbard, well known to our
readers as an author, has earned a
living writing while spending some
twenty-five years doing research on
the subject in developing that new
material. I assure you of two
things : you will find the article fas-
cinating, and it is of more importance
than you can readily realize.

At the moment, I want to call to
the attention of all readers, and par-
ticularly to our readers interested in
psychology, one minor point Hub-
bard has brought out. It is inter-
esting in that five minutes devoted
to observation will demonstrate its
validity— and its validity neatly up-
sets several dozen basic doctrines in
psychometry and educational psy-
chology. The test observation is
very simple, and I recommend it to
you now :

Simply sit back, relax, and close
your eyes lightly, to reduce the dis-
traction of here-and-now impres-
sions. Remember back to this morn-
ing when you left your house or
room, recall the little scene where
you spoke to someone just before
leaving. The exact scene is unim-
portant ; the' point is to recall a
scene. See that scene in memory—
the picture of that person. What
color dress or suit or necktie ? What
color are the objects and background

4

in that scene? See them in your
memory-picture, and notice them.
Then listen to that person talking—
hear the voice in memory, the tones,
the sound of the voices. Is a radio
playing in the background ? Any
other sounds present?

That little test should take about
sixty seconds ; if you have full, nor-
mal human memory you can, in
memory, see a scene in full color, a
sort of kodachrome movie, with
sound-track.

Then try another simple memory
test. Remember back to the last
time you combed or brushed your
hair, and feel the sensation-memory
as an actual perception of the scalp.
The memory makes a definite re-
cording of every sensory impres-
sion ; if your memory is operating
fully, sound, vision, tactile, odor,
taste— everything— can be fully re-
called.

It’s a very simple thing to try this
on a dozen or so people. You— and
they— will be rather thoroughly sur-
prised. Each of us lives so complete-
ly within his own skull that it is sel-
dom we question that other people
may noti live in quite the same kind
of a world as we. The psychologists
have been more than slightly remiss
in failing to investigate and evaluate
that fact. Within a day you will dis-
cover that roughly one third of the
people who try that little test can not
(Continued on page 162)

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

NEW FOUNDATIONS

BY WILMAR H. SKIRAS

A meeting of minds is never easy — hut a meeting
of such minds as the mutant children, with their
strained patterns, teas bound to be difficult . . .

Illustrated by Rogers

“And that’s the full story to date
of Timothy Paul and Elsie Lambeth,
the Wonder Children,” concluded
Dr. Peter Welles, psychiatrist.

Miss Page caught her breath.

“I should have guessed it,” she
said, “or something like it. But who
could have guessed anything like
that? Tim seemed like such an ordi-
nary little boy. And even since Elsie
came I hadn’t dreamed of anything

of such proportions. They didn’t
seem like super-wonderful intellects,
although anyone could see they were
quite bright.”

"They were hiding from you,” Dr.
Welles smiled, “under orders. But
now that we propose to start a school
for these children, and need teachers
and matrons, you are the first one
Dr. Fox well and I want. Will you
join us?”

NEW FOUNDATIONS

s

“Indeed I will ! When is the
school to open?”

“We must get the scholars first. I
plan to spend August touring the
country to see the children and ar-
range with their guardians. Mean-
while we have heen able to write to
some of the children and make pre-
liminary arrangements. When I go
to the Psychiatrists’ Convention next
week, I intend to see Jay Worthing-
ton. I’m leaving here a day early for
that purpose.”

He unlocked a drawer— they were
talking in his office— and leafed
through some papers until he came
to those he wanted. •

“Here’s the correspondence. Jay
wrote us that he had seen our adver-
tisement and thought it deserved
wider attention, adding that he took
a personal interest in the matter. A
few days later, his name turned up
on the list. The detective agency has
by now found nearly all the children
for us, checking everyone who was
exposed to the radiations, and elimi-
nating those who are known to have
died childless.”

There was a tap on the door, and
two impatient children popped their
heads in.

“What does she say?” demanded
Elsie.

“She says yes,” laughed Peter,

“Can’t you talk him into getting
started sooner, Miss Page?” begged
Tim. “That’s a thing I don’t under-
stand about grown people. Y ou have
so much less time left than we do,
and yet you don’t seem to think time
matters at all.”

“Older people have learned to
make haste slowly,” Dr. Welles re-
plied. - “The idea of the school is
scarcely a month old. Believe me,
Tim, we are . as impatient as you are,
but things must be planned and done
in order.”

Elsie moved restlessly.

“If you see the children next
month,” she complained, "I don’t see
why 'you can’t start the month after.
We don’t need all those buildings
Tim planned.”

Tim was prompt to agree.

“We’re already fourteen years
old,” said he, “and in a few years
we’ll be grown up and scattered.
Let’s just have some prefabricated
houses put up quickly, and get
started this September, can’t we?”

Peter Welles shook his head.

“At a week to interview each child
and make arrangements with the
guardians, it will take months.”

“Why a week?” cried both chil-
dren.

“Because,” said Peter somberly,
“there may be more difficulties than
you can imagine.”

“Jay Worthington?”

The boy nodded. “You must be
Dr. Welles,” he said in a rapid treble
voice. “Come right in, doctor.” He
was vibrating with excitement. A
tall, lanky boy,- awkward and what
Tim’s grandmother would have
called “high-strung,” Jay was clearly
bursting to talk. He led the way into
the living room, chattering at double
speed all the while.

“My aunt’s out,” he said, “and my

6

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

uncle has gone for a walk. I tried
to get rid of them, but we’ll have to
watch out. There is so much to say,
I don’t know where to begin. But
that’s for you to say, isn’t it, Dr.
Welles? There must be something
very special back of all this, and a
reason for your visit, and for your
asking about my parents. The
Curtises aren’t really related to me,
you know ; they adopted me when I
was ten months old. This is the best
chair, and here’s an ash tray if you
want one.” *■

“Our letters have been brief be-
cause yours were,” said Dr. Welles,
accepting the chair, “and it is better
policy. But now by all means let us
get to the point, without fencing.
You must have a pretty good idea of
what this is all about.”

Jay bobbed his head vigorously.
“I’d rather you said it, though,” he
replied.

“You answered our ad and said
that you had a personal interest in
children born in 1959 who were of
very high intelligence.”

“That’s putting it bluntly,” said
Jay, catching his breath. “I didn’t
mean to be so plain ... if I meant

. . • I-”

“We’re talking straight now. That
is what the ad meant, and you knew
it. Your name was also on the list
given me by a detective agency which
has been busy tracing the children
born of parents who died as yours
did. You know how they died?”
“Yes, the atomic plant explosion.”
“Right. Putting these two things
together, we knew where we stood.

So Tim wrote to you that we were
starting a school for children of high
I. Q. and that you would be inter-
viewed.”

“That was a body blow,” said Jay.
“I couldn’t see how you knew my
age. And then I realized that you
hadn’t actually said you did know,
and perhaps I had misread you. I
realized that you might mean you
thought I knew some bright children.
So I wrote back and said I didn’t
know any such intelligent children,
and then Tim replied that since I was
born in the same year he was, I must
know some of the things he was in-
terested .in. Then I was pretty sure
something was up, but I replied with
a line saying that perhaps Dr. Hol-
lingworth’s hooks were what he was
interested in having, and he an-
swered on a postcard that they were
too elementary. 'And while I was
still wondering what to say next the
air mail letter came that you would
be here a week after my fourteenth
birthday with greetings and a mes-
sage. You seem to know more about
me than I can account for, but I still
don’t know how much you know.”

“I’ll be perfectly frank. The
atomic explosion gave slow death to
hundreds of men and women. But
before they died, some of the couples
exposed to the radiations had chil-
dren, and some, perhaps all, of these
children are mutants of extraordi-
narily high intelligence. We want to
gather them all together, where they
can have the benefit of one another’s
company and develop as they
should.”

NEW FOUNDATIONS

7

“That is just about as I figured
it,” said Jay with a sigh of relief.
“Tint is one of them, of course? And
Elsie?”

“I have much to tell you about
them. But let me find out about you
first. I know that your uncle is John
Curtis the historian. Who are you?”
“Why . . . I’m his adopted son, Jay
Worthington. The Curtises had me
keep my own name because—”

“That isn’t what I meant,” said
Dr. 'Welles.* “I meant your pen
name, or the name you take out pat-
ents in, or whatever you do. You
don’t use your own name for things
like that, do you?”

Their eyes met and there was a
moment of tense silence.

“Yon do know, then,” said Jay.
“I’m James Vernon Worth.”

This was too great a shock for
Peter Welles to take unblinking. He
even gulped. When he could speak
again he asked, “Does your uncle
know that?”

“Of course not. That’s the whole
point. If people knew, they would
say it was all his work, or that he
helped me so much it might as well
be. And if he had known what I
was doing at first he would have
tried to help me. I didn’t want that.
Of course I have to help him ; but
that’s different.”

“You help him?”

“Yes,” said the boy. “He is
blind.”

The phone rang while Peter was
still trying to take in the implications
of what he had heard. Jay, with a

8

muttered word of apology, dashed
out of the room.

Janies Vernon Worth— this boy?
Those three magnificent biographies
written by this child ? But if he was
the adopted son of John Curtis, and
helped Curtis with his work-

jay was back, breathless but talk-
ing almost before he had opened the
door.

“We haven’t much more time,” he
said. “My uncle will probably be
back in a few minutes. He doesn’t
take long walks.”

“Well, here’s the situation,” said
Peter, and he talked rapidly for ten
minutes, while Jay listened intently
and bobbed his head in eager agree-
ment.

“It sounds wonderful,” said Jay at
last, drawing a deep breath. “I wish
I could be with you. But I can’t.”

“We’ll find some way to arrange
it.”

But Jay shook his head.

“You see, it’s different with me,”
he explained. “Pm getting along all
right. People think it is quite natural
for me to know things, for since my
uncle’s blindness five years ago' I
have read to him every day, and
even before that. And I have always
been with people who talked about
things all around me. My aunt is a
very brilliant woman in her own
right. The amateur radio station is
really ihers. She got it so uncle
could talk to people all over the
world when he couldn’t read any
more. Everybody knows they asked
for a bright baby to adopt, and the

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

rest is credited to my environment
and upbringing. This is a university
town, and people are used to bright
boys and they like them. So I don’t
have to hide very much. Of course
nobody knows I write books. But I
get along very well. And of course
I have to stay with my uncle and
aunt. They have nobody but me.
And really I’m happy here. There
are the dogs to train, for the blind,
you know. I didn’t train my uncle’s
dog, Grigio, of course, but we bought
Guarda soon after and we train her
pups to be guide dogs, and give them
to people who need them. My aunt
and I train them, and Uncle helps.”
A car pulled up in front of the
house and a brisk woman, fortyish,
jumped out.

“My aunt,” explained Jay in all
haste. “Quick, please ! Come out
and look at the pups. We have two
for sale now for pet stock. They
don’t all measure up to be guide
dogs.”

Peter allowed himself to be led out
the back door and to the kennels.

“I see what you mean, Jay,” he
said, “but we can’t leave it at that.”
“We must,” said Jay. “But we
can correspond, and you’ll let me
know what goes on, won’t you ?”
Peter scribbled on a card. “Here’s
my hotel. I’ll phone you soon, and
we can meet a time or two before I
have to leave, can’t we?”

“Oh yes— please do.”

As the boy knelt down to scratch a
pup’s head through the wire of the
enclosure, Peter’s quick eye saw
signs of tears.

“We’ll arrange it, Jay,” he prom-
ised.

“No,” said Jay, gulping. ' “I
wouldn’t go. I wouldn’t go if I
could. I’m going to stay with my
uncle, always.”

A few minutes later, after a per-
functory inspection of the pups,
Peter Welles went away, feeling
greatly depressed.

A telegram signed by Mark Fox-
well awaited Peter at his hotel.

“Agency reports another prospect
same city. Stella Oates, 432 Vine
Avenue.”

Peter stared at the telegram for a
full minute. And how, he wondered,
am I to approach this girl, knowing
nothing about her, or her back-
ground, or her present home or
guardians, am I to walk in without
any warning and whisk her off to
the other side of the continent? What
can I say to her family? How can T
get a chance to talk with her alone?
Should I phone or write first and
pave the way?

But Peter knew that he could not
wait. He must see her that very
night. The psychiatrist looked at his
watch ; it was nearly six o’clock.
Well, dinner first, and perhaps he
could think of something.

At half past seven, ringing the
doorbell at 432 Vine Avenue, Peter
had still not decided what to say.

Uproar broke out behind the
closed door before the bell had ceased
ringing. The doctor’s trained mind
sorted out the sounds and identified
them. The crashes and shrieks on

NEW FOUNDATIONS

9

the left sounded like two or three
children charging through the same
doorway at once, bumping one an-
other and complaining about the
bumps. The rapid series of thumps
was someone in heavy shoes rushing
down the stairs. The slower heavy
tread and rumbling voice probably
indicated a man trying to restore or-
der, and the quick pattering steps
were, very possibly, the lady of the
house on her way to the door.

A woman in a gay apron opened
the door. A hand behind it pulled
the door open more widely, disclos-
ing several dark-haired children in
their early teens. In a doorway on
the right stood a tall man with a
newspaper in his hand. And behind
him, in the room he had just left, sat
a plump, blond young girl with a
book in her lap. So detached was
she from the noisy quartet staring
and giggling and nudging one an-
other as they hastily retreated,
helped by the woman’s good-natured
pushes— with such a cool disdain did
the blond girl view the scene in the
crowded hallway— that Peter spoke
instinctively to her.

“Stella,” he said.

The girl rose quietly and came
slowly toward him with a smile.

“You must excuse this rabble,”
the woman was saying. “They were
expecting some friends—”

“That’s quite all right,” said Peter,
and suddenly a worse uproar than
ever broke out all around him. In
the street behind him a rattling car
appeared, honking loudly. To the
shouts and screams of the young peo-

ple in the car were added shrieks and
yells from the waving quartet in the
hall. Dr. Welles moved out of the
doorway with all haste ; the four
shouting adolescents pushed through
it and were gone.

“I’m glad Stella wasn’t going with
them since you want to see her,”
said the woman., “I’ll get back to my
dishes, then,” and she was gone, too.

Peter turned to the tall man in the
doorway.

“Are you Mr. Oates?”

“Yes. Come on in.”

“My name is Welles. Dr. Peter
Welles.”

The men shook hands. Peter be-
gan to laugh.

“This reminds me,” he said, “of
the Queen’s advice to Alice : ‘Curtsy
while you’re thinking what to say.’ ”

“ ‘Begin at the beginning.’ ”
quoted the little girl, “ ‘and go on un-
til you come to the end. Then stop.’ ”

Mr. Oates looked from one to the
other with a blank stare.

“You want to talk to me, too?” he
asked. “Is it something about her
health?”

“No, Mr. Oates. You are Stella’s
guardian ?”

“Yes. Her uncle. She’s my
brother’s child. Have a chair.”

They sat down, Stella’s expectant
eyes fixed on Peter.

The shabby old house and the"
swarm of half-grown children de-
cided Peter. The only possible ap-
proach was the free-scholarship one.

“It has been suggested,” he said,
“that Stella might be eligible for one

10

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

of the free scholarships that we have
to offer.”

The man’s face hardened.

“First let me tell you who I am,”
said Peter, smiling disarmingly. “I
am a medical man, attending the con-
vention of physicians here this week.
At home, I am the psychologist for
the city schools of Oakley, Cali-
fornia ; but I am resigning the posi-
tion to take charge of a school to be
opened there by a wealthy couple,
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Davis, as a
memorial to their daughter and her
husband. It is their wish that the
school educate and care for other
children who were orphaned at the
same time and in the same way .as
their grandson.”

“In the same way?” repeated Mr.
Oates. “You mean the radiation
deaths?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Welles. “You
will find my name in tonight’s paper
in the list of those attending the con-
vention of psychiatrists here. Let me
show you some identification. I can
give you the names of local men who
can vouch for me.”

The tall man looked over the
papers which Peter offered him, and
nodded.

“The school is to take young peo-
ple through high school and college,”
Dr. Welles went on, “and is to open
within a few months. The young
people must pass certain tests first,
and if they do so satisfactorily they
may apply for a scholarship which
will pay part or all of the student’s
expenses. I don’t know whether you
would care to have Stella go so far

away from home, but if you would
consider allowing her to take the
tests, and she passes them—”

“Are you trying to sell us some-
thing or give us something?” asked
Stella’s uncle.

“If she passes the tests, whether
you pay anything at all is up to you,”
said Peter. “Those who can pay
and are willing to do so, pay as much
as they wish. You have, I believe,
several children of your own to edu-
cate?”

“The four you met in the hall are
mine,”

“Then in your case it could prob-
ably be arranged that all of Stella’s
expenses could be paid by the school.
The aim of Mr. and Mrs. Davis is to
educate these other children as a
memorial to the parents of their
grandson. You can easily satisfy
yourself that Stella will be in good
hands.”

Mr. Oates looked again at the
papers he held.

“What did you say your part is in
all this?”

“I manage the school,” replied
Peter, “and Dr. Mark Foxwell is
.associated with me in the work. Miss
Emily Page is to be Dean of Girls.
One of our prospective students is
boarding with Miss Page until the
school opens.”

“Well, sir,” said Mr. Oates, “if all
this is as you say, and can be proved
to be all right, I don’t mind telling
you that we might think it over and
decide to do it. That is, if Stella
likes the idea.”

Both men turned to look at the

11

NEW FOUNDATIONS

child, who had been listening with-
out a word,

“I think I would, Uncle Ralph,”
said Stella.

“Suppose you go along then and
make coffee and cut some cake for
us,” suggested her uncle. “Give me
a little while to talk business with
Dr. Welles here.” He walked to the
other end of the room, and Stella
came to the doctor’s side and said in
low, urgent tones: “You were sent
to me, weren’t you ?”

“You might put it that way,” re-
plied the psychiatrist. What did she
mean ?

Her uncle was returning with
cigarettes and matches, and Stella
left the room.

“I wanted her to go so I could
speak right out,” he said.

Dr. Welles accepted a cigarette.

“The fact is, Stella isn’t happy
here,” said her uncle, “and there isn’t
much I can do about it. But I tell
you fairly, we have no money for
expensive schooling.”

“No money is needed, Mr. Oates.”

“She and her cousins don’t get on.
They tease her a lot and I can’t won-
der they do. Stella’s notional. Sort
of affected. She puts on that superior
air of hers, and the other kids don’t
like it. They torment her and make
her miserable. I moved to this house
on purpose so she could have a little
room of her own, and I told mine
to keep out of it and let her things
alone. Bits of poetry she used to try
to write, they’d read out loud and
laugh over. She’s a bright little

thing, Stella is, but sometimes sullen.
I’ve often thought if she could go
away to school it would be the mak-
ing of her.”

“She is different from her cousins,
then.”

“Yes, she’s a hop out of kin, all
right. And she takes a sort of pride
in being different, too. I went so far
as to have a talk with her teacher
about her last May. She told me
Stella isn’t much like any other kids
and she might grow up to be a
genius. I favor her all I can, but
she’s beyond me to understand. She
has me get the most outlandish books
out of the library for her to look at,
nothing a normal child would take
any interest in.”

“What sort of books ?”

“Oh, old languages, with different
alphabets, and ancient history, and
things about Asia and Africa. No
harm in it that I could see, but I
don’t know where she ever even
heard of such things. She does well
in school— much better than the rest
of them. That shows them up, of
course, and they don’t like it a little
bit. Mine have good heads enough
but they’re always carrying on and
gadding about in a noisy crowd and
they don’t take any interest in their
books. My wife’s as good as she can
be to Stella, and yet it’s hard all
around. Mine act up and make a
racket on purpose when they know
Stella wants to be quiet, and she
shows plain she don’t like it. She
always has her nose in a book. She
likes deep stuff, too. She says the
others are just like savages. Of

12

ASTOUNDING SCIEN CE-FICTIQN

course kids will call names, and mine
say she just tries to show off. They
say she' only pretends to read those
history hooks.”

“What do you think?”

“I can’t make head or tail of the
books myself, and I doubt if Stella
can, but it seems to interest her.
Now, you see how I’m placed. If I
send her away to school at my own
expense, mine would feel sort of
slighted, you see ? They don’t grudge
their cousin her fair share, and never
did, but that would be a good big
slice more than her share. I don’t
have too much to do with. So if
there is any way it could be managed
so as not to take away from my own
children, Dr. Welles, let me tell you
it would be a godsend.”

“Mr. Oates, I am glad you have
told me all this, and I can see your
problem,” said Peter Welles.

“You said you were the school
psychologist where you live,” said
Ralph Oates, “and I thought likely
you’d understand the girl better than
we do.”

“If you trust her to us, I promise
that you’ll never regret it.”

“I’ll want to be sure, you know.
Look up your references and all
that.”

“I’ll give you a list of local men
who know me,” said Peter, scrib-
bling rapidly on the back of a used
envelope. “Call these. And others
in the West,” he scribbled more.
“The school will not open for some
months,” said Peter, who had just
had a brilliant idea, “but you can
send or bring Stella to us any time.

Miss Page would be glad to take her.
Miss Page has been teaching in the
public schools of Oakley for thirty
years or more; she was one of my
teachers when I was a boy. Stella
might as well live with her and go
to public school as Elsie does, and I
will do what I can for her. You
think, don’t you, that she needs some
special attention?”

“Yes, I do. I don’t know much
about such things, but she doesn’t
seem to adjust well at school, or at
home where she has lived all her life.
I think mine will he better off with
her gone, and she’ll be better off
away from them. They’re too dif-
ferent to get along, and it gets worse
all the time.”

When Stella came in with the
coffee and cake for which she had
been sent, it was already settled that
Dr. Welles would spend the day after
next giving her the required tests.

Maybe all I’ll get is the problem
children, thought Peter ruefully as
he went back to the hotel. What
sort of problem is Stella? We can’t
do without Jay; but he’s right, he
can’t leave. Is there any way out of
that? And what is all this about
Stella ?- As for the convention meet-
ings, which he had come to attend, it
looked as If he wouldn’t get to many
of them. Peter took a sleeping pill
and went to bed early.

Mrs. Oates opened the door to Dr.
Welles at nine o’clock on the ap-
pointed morning.

“I sent the others oH on an all-day
picnic,” she said as she ushered him

NEW FOUNDATIONS

13

in. “My husband was up until mid-
night night before last, telephoning
and sending telegrams. He says to
tell you he has been investigating
you, and you seem to be all right.”

I forgot to ask them not to tell
anyone about the children, moaned
Peter inwardly. Well, I suppose it
was sure to get out sooner or later,
but—

“We don’t want you to make any
mistake,” Mrs. Oates continued.
“We love Stella like she was our
own. I took her when she was a
little baby the same age as my Polly
and I meant to raise them like twins.
But Stella was a different kind of
child. Still, that’s no matter. We’ve
no more wish to be rid of her than
any of the others, except if it’s for
her own good. Ralph says you told
him to satisfy himself about you, and
he’s doing it.”

Yes, but why didn’t I think to ask
him not to tell why he wanted to
know ? Peter groaned behind a smil-
ing face. Oh, why didn’t I say it
was a high intelligence school, and
say nothing about the parentage of
the children? But how then could
I have known anything about Stella ?
Obviously nobody thinks she is very
intelligent. She, like Tim, keeps her
intelligence concealed. Peter suf-
fered a wave of horror as he realized
that he had, as yet, no proof that all
these children were gifted. Then
he told himself that Tim, Elsie and
Jay surely were, and— what was the
woman saying?

“. . . But I told him maybe you
didn’t want your affairs talked about,

14

the school and all, or the children’s
affairs, their parents or anything, so
he never said a word about it.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Oates,” said
Peter in heartfelt relief. “It is true
that we do not wish a premature
revelation of our plans. Only those
most concerned should know about
it. We hope to give as little pub-
licity as possible to the school and
its pupils. It is not good for children
to live in the spotlight.” I’m bab-
bling, he told himself, and stopped.

“Well, I told Ralph it’s for you to
say what you want told, not us. He
has a friend in the police depart-
ment and a friend on a newspaper
here. They got in touch with the
Oakley chief of police and the super-
intendent of schools, and asked about
you and that other doctor and the
teacher you mentioned, and about the
Davis people, too. They got night
letters and phone calls all day yester-
day, your description and your
photograph even ; I believe they said
somebody might be posing as you
here and asked if you were here. I
hope you don’t mind all this, Dr.
Welles, but we had to be' sure.”

“Certainly you had to be sure. I
hope now I can use you as a ref-
erence when I contact guardians of
other children.”

“Ralph said to tell you,” continued
Mrs. Oates, “that if you’d rather take
her when you go, and board her with
Miss Page, that would save her tak-
ing the trip alone so far. We can
pay her fare and her board bill, and
her board at the school too, if she
can have her tuition and books free

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

NEW FOUNDATIONS

IS

.. * •*

like you said. It seems awful sudden
to me, hut Ralph said you spoke as
if you might like it that way. She
can always come straight home to us
if she doesn’t like it there. I
wouldn’t have it any other way.”
‘‘Certainly. And she shall write
to you faithfully. But how does
Stella feel about all this?”

‘‘The child is wild to go. She
keeps saying you’re sent to her,
whatever she means by that. Of
course, she may change her mind
again for all T know. She shan’t he
sent away from here unless she likes.
Now, I'll call her; or was there any-
thing else you want to say to me?”
“Only to ask that you allow her to
he alone with me for the tests. They
are partly psychological, and—”

“I understand that. A child’s al-
ways distracted if people stand
around and watch. What are the
tests for? To show she’s up to her
grade in school?”

“Yes, and to find out where her
chief interests and abilities lie, and
how well balanced she is, and things
of that sort.”

“She’s up to her grade all right,
and in some ways beyond ; but she
doesn’t take a real interest in her
studies, She’s quick, though, and
she has a wonderful memory. There
now, she’s coming. Come in, Stella.
Now you he a good girl, and do what
Dr. Welles says, and I’ll be in the
laundry room if you want me, or the
back yard.”

As soon as her aunt had gone,
Stella sat down opposite Dr. Welles

16

and asked, “You zvere sent to me,
weren’t you?”

“Well, I’m here,” said Peter. “I
think that is enough for now.”

Oddly enough, this seemed to sat-
isfy Stella, even to please her.

But when the first pages of the
Army Alpha test were set before her,
Stella waved it away.

“Puzzles and games like that bore
me,” she said.

“Have you ever taken a test like
this at school ?”

“They gave us one once. I
couldn’t be bothered with it just
then.”

“The hard parts do take effort,”
said Dr. Welles.

Stella stared at him.

“What hard parts?” she asked.

“What did you do with the test at
school?” asked the psychiatrist.
“Push it away like this?”

“Oh, no. You can’t do things like
that at school. I put down answers
to some of it. But really I was
writing a poem, so I couldn’t take
time to bother with puzzles just then.
I have to write poems when I’m in
the mood:”

Peter took a deep breath and
counted ten.

“Are you writing a poem now?”

“No,” said the child, her eyes
wide.

“If you want to he in my school
you must pass my tests,” he said.

“But . . . but I thought you
knew,” and the girl looked alarmed.

“I do know,” said Peter. “I know
a great deal more about you than you

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

think I do. But we must have some
proof.”

‘‘Then it isn’t because I’m an or-
phan and somebody wants to be kind
to orphans like me. I thought I was
right about that,” said Stella. “It’s
something else you want to prove
about me. How my parents died is
only an excuse.”

TJfis speech, confused though it
sounded, brought hope to the doctor
again. For the first time in this
extraordinary interview, Peter felt
able to talk frankly to her.

“You have, I believe, a very su-
perior intelligence,” he told her.
“That is what I want to prove, using
several standardized tests.”

“Oh well, if this must come first,”
said Stella. She picked up the pen-
cil, and Dr. Welles looked at his
watch.

“Fifty minutes is par,” he said.
“You can do it in much less.”

And Stella did.

“Shall we take another test, or
talk a little first?” said Peter when
she had finished.

“I’d rather talk. What are the
other tests ?”

“One of the Stanford-Binet su-
perior adult tests, a Rorschach, and
the Bellvue-Wechsler test, and a per-
sonality-quotient test.”

“I hope they’ll be more interest-
ing. Now will you tell me what you
came to me for?”

“I think you know enough right
now,” said the doctor. “Let me find
out more about you, Stella. Tell
me about yourself. How old are
you? Fourteen?”

“I’ll be fourteen in October.”
“You have lived with your uncle
and aunt all your life. Is your health
good?”

“Yes.”

“Do you sleep well ?”

“Yes.”

“Do you dream very much?”

• Stella hesitated, and said she did
not dream ; but this was an obvious
fib.

“Are your uncle and aunt good to
you?” asked the doctor.

“They mean to be.”

“Your cousins?”

“I guess so.”

Peter asked a number of ordinary
questions until Stella was answering
freely and then he tried a surprise
question.

“What is your pen name?”

“I thought you might know that,”
she said.

“I know you write. Poetry,' isn’t
it?”

“I’m Estelle Starrs.”

Much suddenly became clear to
Peter. Among poets, Estelle Starrs
was most frequently compared with
Emily Dickeson ; among novelists,
with Marie Corelli. Her first novel
had not had a very wide sale, and
the second was newly published.
Peter had not read them, but he had
heard his brother practitioners dis-
cussing them with considerable pro-
fessional interest. “The Star Child”
had provoked much argument ; and
“Incarnation in Egypt,” one au-
thority had remarked, must have
been written by a slightly wacky wife

NEW FOUNDATIONS

17

of some expert Egyptologist. Natu-
rally nobody had dreamed that the
author was a girl of thirteen.

“Who knows you write these
things ?”

“Nobody. Not even the publisher
knows who I am.”

“How do you collect your money ?”
asked Peter.

“They keep it for me,” replied
Stella placidly. “I couldn’t spend it,
could I ? When I am grown up I
can get it. I wrote them I would
ask for it when I wanted it.”

Peter Welles opened his suitcase
again and laid some papers before
her. But again the child hesitated.
“I can’t take this,” she said.

“It’s a personality quotient test,”
he said. “I want to find out what
sort of girl you are, your tastes and
all that. You can’t possibly fail.
There are no wrong answers.”

“I know what answers I ought to
give,” she said. “Anybody can see
what is wanted. I can’t take it and
be honest. You’ll find out what I
am like soon enough.”

There was something to that, Peter
conceded.

“Just ask me questions yourself,
instead of this made-up test,” she
suggested. “You can tell without
asking, can’t you ?”

“I can tell you some things about
yourself,” he agreed. “Let’s see how
well I can do. Pretend I’m a for-
tune teller at the beach. You believe
that nobody understands you, that it
is your destiny to live alone forever,
and that you will not*be appreciated

18

at your true worth until after you
have been long dead.”

“I feared that might be true,”
said the child gravely, “but now that
you have come to me, won’t every-
thing be different?”

“If you come with me, things will
be better for you,” Peter replied with
equal gravity, “but it may take time.”

He put away the test she .had
rejected, and took out the Rorschach
cards. Stella enjoyed this test and
chattered freely during it. '

“I notice,” said Dr. Welles, “that
your answers show, as your books
do, an interest in Egypt and India
and the Orient generally. Isn’t this
an unusual interest for a girl of your
age?”

“Perhaps.”

“How did you come to take a spe-
cial interest in things like this?” he
asked.

The child replied stiffly, “It is not
permitted me to tell.”

The psychiatrist tried another tack.

“How can you tell me about your
books, when you can’t tell even the
publisher ?”

“I knew you would believe me,”
said Stella.

“Wouldn’t your family believe
you ?”

“Possibly. But they would not
understand,” said the child, with
marked distaste.

“How do you get along with your
family ?”

“I live here as a stranger,” said
Stella.

“You mean they don’t understand
you ?”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“Of course not. And I have no
sympathy with them. We are too
different.”

Mrs. Oates knocked at the door
and called them to lunch. The little
girl ate well and normally, and
washed the dishes while the psychia-
trist talked with her aunt. Then
the questioning and testing of Stella
was resumed. By the time he was
ready to leave, Dr. Welles was sat-
isfied as to Stella’s intelligence, and
he phoned the airport for a reserva-
tion for her on his plane four days
later. She was certainly one of the
Wonder Children, and she needed
his help.

After supper, at this hotel, Peter
wrote up his notes. Birth, normal.
Infancy, normal. General health,
good. Not a “nervous child.” (Jay’s
record would probably be the oppo-
site in that respect.) No serious ill-
nesses. No delusion of persecution,
but strong feeling on both sides that
Stella did not fit in with the rest of
the family. Stella admitted to having
had childish fancies, years before,
that she might not be related to them
at all, but said she now knew better
than to think she could be a change-
ling, a fairy princess, or royalty in
disguise. She was sure that she
really was the child of Ralph Oates’
brother, and thought perhaps her
own father and, especially, her own
mother, might have understood her
better. “Though not entirely,” she
added.

“Why do you think they would?”

“My uncle understands me better

than the others in this family,” ex-
plained Stella. “So his brother, my
own father, probably would have
understood me better yet. My aunt
isn’t really related to me at all, by
blood, and her children take after
her. I suppose I must take after my
own mother.”

“Why wouldn’t your own mother
understand you entirely?”

“I just don’t think she would,”
replied Stella firmly. And on this
she refused to elaborate.

As regards her emotional state,
Stella said that she was happier than
she had formerly been, since she had
begun to have things published, but
that she had never expected to be
truly happy in such an uncongenial
environment.

“My uncle tries to be sympathetic,
and sides with me all he can,” she
said, “but I don’t think he really tries
to understand me much.”

Stella admitted to “seeing things”
in the hypnagogic state, but said they
“usually don’t mean anything. It’s
like dreaming, only I’m not quite
asleep.” She showed no sign of any
hallucinations, illusions or delusions,"
and admitted to no more obsessions,
phobias and compulsions than are
normal in an imaginative, lonely
youngster. Her frankness in dis-
cussing these matters spoke well for
her. She had excellent powers of
observation, and could reason nimbly
when she chose to do so, but her
reading had been very limited be-
cause, as she explained, children
under sixteen were not allowed in

NEW FOUNDATIONS

19

the adult section of the library at all.
Stella was, therefore, limited to the
books she could borrow from friends
or ask her uncle to get for her. She
was overjoyed to hear that in Oakley
she could choose books freely from
the adult sections.

When she was asked what she
would pack to take with her— Dr.
Welles’ idea being to check on the
practical side of her nature— Stella
promptly named the necessary arti-
cles, described her clothing in terms
of summer and winter weight, asked
about the climate to which she would
be moving, and then suggested that
Peter look over her dresses to see
which would be suitable to take.

“Your aunt will know that,'” he
replied.

“Please,” begged Stella. There
was a new look in her eyes, and anx-
ious lines in her face. For the first
time she seemed nervous. Obedi-
ently, the doctor rose and followed
her.

Upstairs in her room, with the
door shut, Stella turned to him, and
said in a fierce whisper, “You won’t
tell?”

“No,” he assured her, mystified.

“She’ll see if I pack them. Please,
will you take them— now?”

“Oh! Manuscripts?” he guessed.

“Yes, and notes. If you move that
chest of drawers quickly— there’s a
loose board underneath it, if I pull
out a nail. There.” And she knelt,
reached in under the floor and pro-
duced a bundle wrapped in news-
paper.

“May I look?” Peter opened the

wrappings and picked up a thin sheaf
of papers, fastened with a paper clip,
top sheaf of a dozen or more.

“ ‘Mercer’s Ethiopic Grammar,
with chrestomathy and glossary,’ ”
he read in an awed undertone.
“What is chrestomathy, may I ask?”
“It’s from the Greek chrestos, use-
ful, and manthanein, to learn,” re-
plied the little girl. “It means
extracts from books in a foreign lan-
guage, with notes, so you can learn.”
She reached under the floor boards
again and produced a second bundle
and a third.

“That’s all,” she said. “Notes, and
a few manuscript poems. Put them
all in this brief case— it’s my school
case, but my aunt will think it’s
yours. She doesn’t notice very
much.”

Stella indicated the books in the
small bookcase by her bed.

“These are story books and poems
and things. May I take the books ?”
“Your uncle can ship them to
you.” He could see some of the
titles ; Stella’s three books were
there. Her poems were called
“Sheaves of Stars.”

“Shh! Here’s my aunt,” said
Stella, and Peter thrust the three
bundles of paper into the brief case,
while Stella snatched a dress from
the closet and held it up before him.

“You’ll need some fairly warm
things for next winter, and for the
cool nights even now,” he was say-
ing when Mrs. Oates opened the
door.

“I’ll see to it,” said Mrs. Oates.
“I was going to make the girls some

20

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

dresses this summer ; I’ll send
Stella’s to her as fast as I can finish
them.”

Peter Welles, pondering all these
things in his hotel room that evening,
added a line to his page of notes,
and opened the brief case.

“A Conversation-Grammar of the
Hundustani Language,” he read.
“Biblical Hebrew.” "Introduction
to Literary Chinese.” “Arabic Lan-
guage and Grammar.” "An Anglo-
Saxon Reader.” “Modern Persian
Reader.” “A Short Grammar of
Attic Greek.” There were more, but
Peter felt unable to face them. He
opened the second package. “E.
Naville’s ‘The Ancient Egyptian
Faith,’ ” he read, “Breasted’ s ‘His-
tory of Egypt from the Earliest
Times to the Persian Conquest.’ ”
There were notes about India, Tibet,
Babylon, Persia. Petet looked no
more. With a slight shudder, he
returned all the notes to the brief
case and closed it firmly. Stella
should carry it all the way across the
continent with her own hands. All
those pages of notes in a careful, mi-
nute handwriting must have cost
long hours of hard labor in secret.
These were the odd hooks she “just
wanted to glance over” in which “no
child could possibly be interested.”
These were the source materials for
her books.

Peter attended the rest of the con-
ferences he had come to attend. He
telephoned Stella daily, but did not
see her again. A telegram to Miss

Page telling her to expect the child
was followed by a letter giving the
story. Peter met Jay almost daily,
and talked to him about all they were
doing and planning to do, but he did
not tell the two children anything
about each other. Jay, throbbing
with eagerness to hear all that Dr.
Welles would tell him about Tim and
Elsie and the school, exacted a prom-
ise that Peter and the others would
write often to him, but steadfastly re-
fused to think about attending the
school. It was, he said, impossible,
and there was no use in thinking
about it.

Tn the taxi to the plane, Stella
asked a question.

“The other children— are they any-
thing like me?”

“Not very much,” replied Peter.
“I hope you will like them and get
along with them as well as you can.
But I don’t think they will share your
special interests to any great extent.”

Stella, who had been looking puz-
zled, looked even more so.

“What do we have in common?”
she asked. Peter signed her to si-
lence, but at the airport he walked
with her to a place where they could
not be overheard and began the ex-
planation and the warning he real-
ized she must be given.

“We are trying to gather you all
together because most of you have
had difficulty in adjusting to the
world of normal children. Naturally
the tastes and interests of each child
are personal and different from those
of the others. Tim and Elsie and

NEW FOUNDATIONS

21

you are as unlike as children can be,
except that you all have exception-
iftly high intelligence. You shotdd
be able to adjust to one another if
you make the effort, and you can
learn from one another and teach one
another. It is probable that you all
have a wide range of interests, al-
though your special interests are dif-
ferent there must be many- things
you can share.”

Stella looked bewildered, then ex-
tremely thoughtful, and then she
nodded. What was going on in her
mind was more than Peter could
guess.

“I’ll leave it to you to tell them
as much or as little about yourself
as you choose,” he said. “There is,
I know, much that you have not told
me.”

Thus warned, Stella said little
about herself to Elsie or to Tim at
first, and even less to Miss Page and
to Dr. Foxwell. The children read
her published works with some mys-
tification, and she read theirs.

“Tim certainly can do almost
everything,” she confided to Dr.
Welles. “He knows something about
almost everything, too.”

“But you know more about the
Orient and about Africa,” he replied.

“It’s right what you told me about
their having different interests from
mine.”

“Your interests will widen, no
doubt,” said Dr. Welles, “and so will
theirs. It is good that you have dif-
ferent specialized branches of knowl-
edge to share with one another.”

Dr. Foxwell, after this first meet-
ing with Stella, and recalling Peter’s
letter concerning her, had made a
dire prediction that when Stella and
Elsie were brought together, the
ringing clash between the two per-
sonalities would probably resound
for several miles. But Elsie was
making tremendous efforts to over-
come her faults, particularly her
tendency to outspoken criticism of
everything which differed in the least
from her own notions, and she was
determined to get along with the
other Wonder Children or die in the
effort. Stella’s habits were rather
toward withdrawal than toward vio-
lence when she was not “under-
stood,” and as for Tim, nothing
human was alien to that ardent
would-be -psychiatrist. To all three
children, what really counted was
that they had found others of their
own age who were of the same men-
tal level, and they were eager to
share their interests and to help one
another. Their clashes were indeed
frequent, and misunderstandings rife,
but the bond which bound them to-
gether was stronger than their dif-
ferences.

Dr. Welles was conscious that
Stella had something on her mind
and that she was trying to think
something out. It seemed that until
she had done so she was avoiding
any definite statements except those
of indisputable fact. She often stared
at the others as if puzzled, and they
seemed puzzled about her.

For the first fortnight, Dr. Welles
made no effort to quiz Stella, but left

22

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

her largely to the society of Elsie and
Tim, and observed her as much as he
could. Offered her choice of a pet,
Stella said that since all the others
were breeding cats she would be con-
tent with only one of her own, and
she chose a coal-black, short-haired,
green-eyed tom which she had neu-
tered. She named it Hegai ; and
Peter Welles had almost as hard a
time tracking down that name as he
had in identifying the Grigio for
which Jay’s guardian’s guide-dog
was named. Stella and Elsie went
almost daily to the main library and
returned loaded with volumes. Miss
Page privately kept a list of the titles.

“There is no point in the reading
that I can see,” she reported to Dr.
Welles. “Stella is going on a sort
of reading jag, reading anything she
lays her hands on ; and Elsie is go-
ing through the library and reading
everything they didn’t have in the
library in her home town. They each
read most of what the other brings
home. I should think it would give
them both colic.”

“And are they getting enough ex-
ercise and play ?”

“Oh yes, I see to that. And Tim
comes over nearly every afternoon,
or they go to play with him.”

Elsie spent one evening a week
with Dr. Welles and one with Dr.
Foxwell. Tim no longer had pro-
fessional consultations with the doc-
tor, and both of the doctors were
extremely busy, for Peter had not
yet given up his work with his pa-
tients, and Dr. Foxwell was occupied

with business affairs connected with
plans for the school.

“How do you get along with
Stella?” Dr. Welles asked Elsie one
evening.

“All right,” said Elsie. “Some-
times she makes me mad, though.
She did today.”

“Tell me about it.”

“We read each other’s stuff, of
course,” Elsie said, “and when I
showed her a sonnet sequence, she
said it was wordy and stylized.
Wordy!”

“I haven’t had time to read any
of her poems yet. What are they
like ?” inquired the psychiatrist.

“She has a new one she calls ‘Fig-
ures.’ Figures of speech, she means.
No rhyme, nothing much to them.
Just little short things.”

“Well, I suppose a person who
calls sonnets ‘wordy’ would have to
write very short things,” smiled
Peter. “Can you repeat one?”
Elsie struck a pose and declaimed :
“ ‘Branches of trees out-
stretched—

Your arms.

I am a timid bird
Huddled in them.’ ”

“Is that all ?”

“The rest are like that. Or worse.
So, of course, I didn’t show her my
new sequence, the Summa one.” The
last sentence was sarcastic.

Elsie and Tim had been reading
the Summa Theologica. Tim, as the
psychiatrist knew, was most im-
pressed by its mathematical quality,
and kept saying that it ought to be
possible to reduce it to equations, if

NEW FOUNDATIONS

23

one could but find the right symbols.
But Elsie saw it as a work of art,
each question-section as concise and
disciplined as a sonnet ; and she was
actually engaged in turning out ex-
amples of what she meant— each ob-
jection expressed in the octave, the
reply and answer to the objection
in the sestet. This exquisitely diffi-
cult task was her most cherished
secret ; no one knew of it except Dr.
Welles.

“And how is the Summa sequence
getting along?”

“Terrible!” Elsie’s eyes were
bright with enthusiasm. “I have
to set every word in place like . . .
like God setting the stars in the sky.
I’ll never get even one of the son-
nets to suit me. It’s better poetry
in the original. But it is fun to try.”

What odd definitions these chil-
dren had for fun, mused Peter.

“I remember another of Stella’s
things,” said' Elsie, and she repeated
it:

“ ‘I am the dull earth,

You are lightning,

Tying me to heaven
An instant.’ ”

“She does it well,” said Peter, with
some severity. “You can’t say' it is
not poetry.”

“Yah !” said Elsie, with great sim-
plicity. “She gets a good idea or
phrase and she throws it on to paper
and that’s all there is to it. She
doesn’t work with it, that’s what is
wrong. But what can you expect?
She believes in inspiration.”

Her head held high, Elsie left the
consultation room, and the psychia-

trist was left with his thoughts.

After a few moments he picked up
the telephone and called Miss Page.

“Hello? Peter Welles speaking.
I think we’d better give the children
a little studying to do this summer . . .
No, nothing burdensome . . . An es-
say to read together and discuss was
what I had in mind ... Yes, you’re
right, there’s a reason for it . . . Poe’s
‘Philosophy of Composition’ will do
to start with.”

“How he wrote ‘The Raven’?”
Miss Page’s voice came over the
wire. “It will be worth the price of
admission to hear what they say
about it.”

“Give them each a copy tomorrow
after supper, or as soon as von can
get three copies,” Peter directed,
“and let me know beforehand. You
and I have some work to do while
they read.”

So a few evenings later, Dr. Welles
and Miss Page ostensibly busied
themselves with plans and calcula-
tions at one end of the living room,
while the three children, curled in
easy chairs or sprawled on the floor,
read the essay and exploded into
talk. Never was a man more thor-
oughly disagreed with. And yet it
soon became apparent that there was
considerable disagreement among the
children themselves. “It depends
on just what he means,” they often
remarked, but they doubted whether
masterpieces were often written
backwards, and even more did they
question whether Poe actually wrote
as he said he did.

25

new foxjn Cations

“I think he rationalized it after-
wards,” Tim insisted, while Elsie
was inclined to think the essay an
elaborate hoax, and Stella considered
it a defense against “those fool peo-
ple who keep asking you how you
do it, and wouldn’t understand if you
told them.”

All of the children jeered at Poe’s
remarks about Beauty, not even
Stella being willing to concede that
Beauty makes one weep. Tim stout-
ly maintained that death is not a
very melancholy topic to a Christian,
and Elsie couldn’t see anything beau-
tiful about the loss of a loved one,
“especially if you howl about it all
your life.” To the surprise of the
listening elders, all three children
thought that Poe greatly exaggerated
originality.

“Only people who don’t know
much and have never read much
think you can ever be original,” said
Elsie.

“Yes, almost everything possible
was done or thought thousands of
years ago,” agreed Stella, “in a liter-
ary way, I mean.”

“It’s a sort of pride, I think,” Tim
mused. “As if to say, nobody else
in all creation has ever had a mind
as good as mine; I can think of
things never thought before.”

“Well, he does admit that it’s only
the combinations that can be origi-
nal,” Elsie pointed out. "Like his
stanza form.”

“Yes, but I bet that could be dupli-
cated if you hunted long enough,”
said Tim. “Let’s keep our eyes open

26

for that kind of stanza when we
read.”

“Poe tries so hard to be gruesome
that half the time he’s only funny,”
Elsie said.

“The silly old raven would soon
starve to death sitting on that bust,”
giggled Tim. “I think the poem is
much too long, too ; and the refrain
dates it.”

The girls disagreed with him
there. There were times, said Elsie,
when a refrain belonged in a poem,
even though it had been done to
death in some periods.

“But the w'hole essay is all w f rong,”
said Stella heatedly. “It makes it
all so mechanical. We couldn’t
write that way, and I don’t believe
anybody could.”

“Maybe if they didn’t write any-
thing very good,” said Elsie. “ ‘The
Raven’ isn’t really good.”

“I should think you’d be too busy
with the mechanics to accomplish
anything,” said Stella. “And he
doesn’t say a bit about imagination.”

“I read something else of his
once,” Tim frowned as he tried to
remember it, “how he chose the
name Lenore by choosing the most
musical consonants and vowels and
combining as many of them as he
could in one name, or something like
that.”

The girls shouted.

“Well, if he doesn’t know how to
write without all that rigmarole,”
Elsie said violently, “he’s not much
of a writer.”

“He doesn’t claim to be inspired,”
said Stella.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“But he’s always talking about in-
*. tuition,” said Elsie, “and he doesn’t
much like it.”

“What is intuition?” asked Tim
briskly. “And inspiration that some
writers used to believe in— do you?”
“Of course I do,” said Stella in-
dignantly, “That’s how I know Poe
wasn’t really a poet. He doesn’t
even know what inspiration is. He
works like a robot.”

“Well, I don’t know what it is,
either,” retorted Elsie, “I just work
until it comes out right. And I
don’t work like a robot at all.”

“No, of course you don’t,” Stella
said. “But I think you work over
things too much,” she added kindly.
“Why don’t you put your things
down as they come, unspoiled ?”
Elsie gaped at her.

“Just raw?”

Tim, who had never written
poetry, was intensely interested. The
adults, who had been completely for-
gotten, had long since given up the
pretense of work.

“Y ou don’t write the way he says,
do you?” demanded Stella.

“No, of course not,” replied Elsie,
“but I don’t claim to be inspired.
What do you think, Tim ?”

“Well, isn’t it possible,” said Tim,
with an excellent though uncon-
scious caricature of Peter Welles’
professional manner, “that Poe
really did go through all that he says
he does, very rapidly indeed, and
then went hack and analyzed it and
described it as if it had been de-
liberate and purposive ? Your thought
processes are so rapid, Stella, that

NEW FOUNDATIONS

you probably don’t know you think
at all, it seems to come in one burst.”

“I know it’s inspiration,” said
Stella firmly. “I write poems that
aren’t like anything I ever thought.
They come to me. I woke up one
night last week and wrote a long one
and it amazed me. It wasn’t at all
like anything I had ever thought in
all my life, and at first I couldn’t
even understand it. But it had great
meaning for me— although maybe not
for anyone else.”

“If it had such great meaning for
you and for nobody else,” said Elsie,
“it must have come from something
in yourself— your own experiences
and thoughts— so it couldn’t-be in-
spired from outside yourself.”

“Like dreams,” suggested Tim.
“Sometimes you can’t figure out
where they come from, but . . . Peter
can tell us 1” he cried confidently,,
remembering the presence of the
grownups. And the children all
rushed across the room, shouting
questions in chorus.

“Professionally, I know nothing
about inspiration,” Dr. Welles an-
swered. “My patients do sometimes
suffer from hallucinations in which
voices speak to them ; but you mean
something rather different. Miss
Page, may we consult your diction-
ary? Ah. Here we have it. From
inspirare, to blow upon or into, to
breathe into. ‘To fuse or suggest:
ideas or monitions supernaturallv ;
to communicate divine instructions
to the mind.’ In this sense we speak
of the writers of Sacred Scripture

27

as inspired. They wrote under the
guidance of God,”

“That wouldn’t apply to our
poetry, surely,” said Elsie to Stella,
who flushed hotly and made haste to
agree.

“ ‘To infuse ideas or poetic
spirit,’ ” read Peter. “It doesn’t say
by whom this is done. Who or what
inspires your poetry, Stella ?”

The child looked stunned.

“I don’t know. I never thought
about that.”

“Well, I don’t understand about
the Bible,” began Tint, but the doc-
tor silenced him.

"Leave that for now. It is irrele-
vant. Well, Stella?”

As Stella did not answer, Elsie
took it upon herself to do so.

“I should think that’s the whole
point, who inspires you,” she said.
“I wouldn’t want to be dictated to by
just anybody or anything. It might
be a hallucination, or a demon, or
my own imagination. I think it’s
just ideas that come into your head
and you don’t stop to think where
they come from, but they all have a
natural explanation.”

“Might be largely unconscious or
subconscious, as in the case of
dreams,” suggested Tim. “Then it
would be hard to track down some-
times, as dreams often are.”

“Yes, and if you get a good idea
you don’t stop to fret about the psy-
chology of its coming, you just grab
it quick before it gets away,” Elsie
volunteered. “What about intuition,
Dr. Welles? Do you know?”

“About that I think I do know and

can explain. There are, in what
Jung calls the psyche, four basic
functions, of which intuition is one.”
“The psyche? Does he mean,
soul ?”

“More or less. Jung’s term also
includes the unconscious. Termi-
nology differs considerably. Poe re-
ferred, you notice, to . . . where’s
the place . . . 'the object Truth, or
that satisfaction of the intellect, and
the object Passion or the excitement
of the heart.’ The scholastics say
that the soul has intelligence and free
will; the intellect seeks to know, to
grasp the truth, while the will desires
happiness. Love resides in the will.”
“I thought love would reside in the
emotions,” interrupted Elsie.

“Depends on the definition,” Tim
said promptly.

“It is impossible that the human
will be deeply moved by an object,
says St. Thomas Aquinas, without
passion being aroused in the sense
appetite. Spiritual love flows from
the will, and the emotions and sense
appetites follow along with it. In all
these matters we must understand
the words as they are meant, and
recognize, on the one hand, identity
of thought under difference of termi-
nology, and, on the other hand, dif-
ference of thought in many cases
where the words used are identical.
The word love, for example, has
many meanings.”

Miss Page marveled anew at the
children, who were drinking it all in
with concentrated interest.

“What Jung calls ‘thought’ cor-
responds to what Poe and the scho-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

28

lastics call ‘intellect’ and others call
‘reason,’ and this function evaluates
by means of cognition from the view-
point ‘true-false.’ Is that clear?”

“Yes. Go on,” chorused the chil-
dren.

“What Poe calls ‘passion’ and the
scholastics call ‘the will’ is what Jung
calls ‘feeling’ which evaluates by
means of emotions, he says, from the
viewpoint ‘agreeable-disagreeable.’
We choose, or love, or desire, what
seems good to us, in other words.”

“Morally good?” asked Tim.

“Any kind of good. Good art-
good pie— a good time. The will
chooses a thing under its aspect of
good, invariably— because of the good
in it. It may be morally bad to take
a pie, but you may take it because it
is a good pie. Now the two func-
tions <*f the psyche are called ra-
tional functions, because they deal
with values. Sensation and intui-
tion, on the other hand, are called
irrational, because they work with
mere perceptions. Sensation takes
things as they are, without valuing
them or thinking about them.”

“But people do think about—”

“Yes, but that’s using another
function, you see. The sensation
type of person will look at a picture
or a landscape and see the details—
name the trees, the colors of the dif-
ferent flowers, and all that ; or he
notices an event in the same way, but
not the significance, the meaning of
things. Such a person in an art
gallery will count the cherubs flying
about a saint’s head, and think you are

NEW FOUNDATIONS

lacking in observation if you cannot
tell how many there were. Intuition
also perceives, but in a special way,
seeing the inner meanings and the
potentialities of things, getting im-
pressions rather than definite, photo-
graphic details. Where’s the diction-
ary ? Oh, yes. ‘The act of knowing
by direct perception or comprehen-
sion, withdlit reasoning or deduc-
tion; a first or primary truth; in-
sight; apprehension.’”

“But if it concerns truth, why is
there no reasoning or deducing?”
Tim wanted to know.

“The axioms, and so forth, which
are prerequisite to the reasoning
process, must come from some-
where,” explained Dr. Welles. “Self-
evident truths, as we sometimes call
them, are too simple to be demon-
strated. The axioms of geometry,
the first facts such as ‘I exist’ and ‘I
think’ are known directly. You’d
better all have a go at a textbook on
Criteriology— Glenn’s is on my
shelves somewhere. This is the
study of the tests and norms by
which one may judge what is true
and certain in human thinking, rea-
soning and knowledge. Now, to get
back to intuition as it is often used
the word refers to a guess, hunch,
or even an impulse which may be
false or evil. You may think you
know intuitively that you can trust a
certain person, and he would steal
your last cent. I’m not the intuitive
type myself. But a thing may be per-
ceived intuitively and then checked
by reason. There are men of the
intuitive type, of the thinking type

29

and of the intuitive-thinking type.
Similarly a thing may appeal to the
senses and then he rejected by the
will. The pie which would be taken
at the dictation of the senses because
it is good to eat, might be rejected
by the will, which seeks a higher
good, a moral good. We might go
into all this at length”— Dr. Welles
glanced at the clock— “but I see it is
time for Tim to go home, and rather
ton near bedtime for you girls.”

“Imagination,” pleaded Elsie.
“What’s that?”

“Just very briefly,” wheedled Tim.

“Oh, imagination is the power by
which we recall or project images of
things the senses have perceived. St.
Thomas says it is the ability to pic-
ture material things in their absence.
Jung calls it a creative power which
firings up an image out of the ma-
terial of the unconscious. You can
not imagine what you have not first
seen, but you can combine different
images into one. If you wish to im-
agine a mermaid, you ..combine a
woman’s upper part with a fish’s tail.
Or if you try to imagine a scene on
Venus or Mars, you might think of,
a plant shaped like grass, the size of
a tree, colored like the sky, with a
flower like a cat’s head, having eyes
like a bee and feelers like a snail. Do
you understand me?”

“You mean we can’t imagine any-
thing?” cried Stella.

“It’s like Poe’s originality— only
the combinations can be original?”
Elsie exclaimed.

“Of course, a man born blind can’t
imagine red or blue,” said Tim. “Try

30

imagining a new color, Go on, try.”
“Well, think it over and read up
on it,” advised Dr. Welles. “I’ll
lend you books if you like. Good-
night, all of you, please ! Miss Page
and I will finish off our work here.”
The girls went up to their rooms,
and Timothy left the house.

"What in the world will they make
of all that?” Miss Page wondered.

“Tim understood, and Elsie got
most of it,” Dr. Welles replied.
“What Stella thinks is the question.
I'll let it all soak in for a while, and
see what comes of it.”

“They are all so different.”

“Yes. And Jay is unlike them all.
He tells me in his last letter— I for-
got to bring it along— that he has
learned several languages. It seems
that when his aunt first began to read
aloud to his uncle, because of Mr.
Curtis’ failing sight, Jay demanded
lessons. His aunt gave him a month’s
instruction with special emphasis on
pronunciation, and after that he
could read German aloud and said he
wanted to learn another language.
Apparently they still think he does
not understand what he reads and
has merely learned how to pronounce
the words to help his uncle, as a
singer learns to sing in several lan-
guages without knowing or caring
what the words mean. Actually he
reads German, French, Latin, Span-
ish and Italian perfectly, and is eager
for a chance to try speaking and
writing them.”

“How Tim would love to be with

Jay!”

“Yes. We must think of some

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

way to get Jay here. We need him,
and I think we have much to offer
him, too.”

‘‘If he would come, under the cir-
cumstances, I wouldn’t want him,”
said Miss Page.

“That’s the problem, ” said Dr.
Welles.

“Hello, Stella.”

“Hello, Dr. Welles. Miss Page
said you wanted nle.”

“Come right in.” Peter offered
her a comfortable chair and set a dish
of candies temptingly close while he
talked. “I plan to have private talks
with each one of our pupils fairly
often, and help you with any prob-
lems you may have. Now that you
have had a while to get settled here
and get to know us all, we may as
well begin our talks.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is everything going all right?
Are you happy?”

“Oh yes, Dr. Welles,” replied
Stella. “It’s so interesting here.
Miss Page is so good to me. And I
can read all I want to.”

“No troubles at all?”

“No, none at all.”

“What have you been thinking
about lately?”

“I’ve been thinking about what we
were all saying about inspiration, and
Tim gave me some books to read
about dreams and their origins,”
Stella said, “and I think you must be
right. We’ve been talking it all
over. One thing I like best,” she
added in a burst of confidence, “is
that even when they don’t agree with

me or understand me, they never act
mean. I wrote a poem in which I
compared myself to a timid bird, and
my cousins or any other kids I ever
knew would have chased me around
for weeks yelling, ‘Hey, timid bird !’
and making all kinds of fun. But
Elsie knew what I meant, even if she
didn’t care for the poem. She’s quite
blunt, but she takes things the way
they are meant. And Tim is awfully
kind. Even when they call me crazy,
they don’t act as if they’re glad of it.”
“Then you have no problems to set
before me right now ?” said Peter,
making no comment on this inno-
cently revealing speech, and giving
no sign how much it had moved him.
“Let’s talk, then. Suppose you tell
me, what is your philosophy of life?”
Tim would instantly have de-
manded a definition of the phrase.
Stella only looked thoughtful.

“I never formulated one, I guess,”
she said. “I’d have to think about it.
I never heard that expression be-
fore.”

“Would you say your philosophy
is simple or complex ?”

“Fairly complex, I think.”

“But don’t you think a simple
philosophy would be easier to
apply ?”

“Well, yes, but one must begin
with a complex philosophy, because
life is so complex, and the philoso-
phy must fit it,” said Stella care-
fully. “Perhaps it will simplify after
a while, when I understand things
better.”

Dr. Welles nodded slowly three or
four times.

NEW FOUNDATIONS

31

“Suppose you tell me how you
account for your being so different
from your cousins and from other
children.”

"Right now I*in not sure about
that. Tim says it's the radiations.
But I don’t understand such things.
I had a theory worked out, .but— ”
Her voice trailed off into silence and
she looked doubtfully at Peter.

“I’d like very much to hear it,”
said the psychiatrist.

“I’m not sure you would under-
stand.”

“I’ll try.” Humanly speaking,
there was nothing Peter Welles
loathed so much as a person’s assum-
ing that he or she was too wonder-
fully unique to he understood. Pro-
fessionally he was used to it.

“Timothy said that if nobody else
thinks the way you do, you must be
wrong.”

“Well, suppose you tell me what
your theory was, and how you came
to formulate it, and what reasoning
and evidence support it, and what is
against it,” suggested Peter encour-
agingly. He scratched a match and
gave his attention to his pipe for a
moment. The child spent the mo-
ment in concentrated thought.

“Cutting out inspiration made
things a little simpler,” she said, “but
there are still so many complications
and alternatives ; perhaps you can
help. I’ll try to tell you. Where to
begin?” she murmured, and then
plunged in. “I guess it began when
I was first taken to a museum. Pete
was taking ancient history in school
and Pat had to visit local points of

32

interest, and my aunt took Pokey
and Polly and me along. They ran
around saying, ‘Isn’t this funny?’
and laughing like anything, or else
they were bored stiff and wouldn’t
look at all. They chattered and
squealed so—”

“I know,” said Dr. Welles, when
Stella paused and gave him a look
that begged for understanding.

“Either they all ran off. and left
me, or I slipped ^t way, and there I
was alone, wandering around in the
great dark rooms and able to look
quietly at everything as long as I
‘liked.”

“Dark?”

Stella frowned and tried to recap-
ture the scene.

“They seemed dark. There was
light to see by, of course, but it was
shadowy. There were mummies
and vases and things, and I wan-
dered around for what seemed like a
long time. Then I found myself be-
fore a great piece of stone with writ-
ing on it that I recognized as Egyp-
tian. It was high and wide and solid,
and for a flash I could remember it
all. I knew I had been there, in
Egypt, and had seen it many times
before.”

The child had lived the moment
again as she spoke. Then she looked
up, defiantly yet fearfully at Peter,
who pulled silently at his pipe, his
face without expression.

~ “That was the beginning,” said
Stella, and she waited for comment.

“Go on.”

“Then I went into other rooms
and saw other things. It was the

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

same with cuneiform, almost. I al-
most remembered how to read it,
although I could not remember see-
ing those particular inscriptions.
Then the others found me and we
went home. Oh, how they always
chattered. So silly. Anything even
a little bit different they thought
was funny and would scream over it.
Pat used to take care of children and
she would show them pictures and
say, ‘See the funny man. He’s all
black. Isn’t he funny? Look at
the man with feathers on his head.
Isn’t he funny?’ and if they passed
a Chinese on the street they’d nudge
each other and say, ‘Look, look, isn’t
he funny?’ What’s funny about
that?”

“Nothing whatever,” said Peter,
with such unexpected warmth that
Stella took heart and went on.

“Then I asked my uncle about
books on ancient times and places
and languages and he would try to
get whatever I wanted. He asked
for story books first and when .he
brought me Haggard I was sure I
was right. He took me to the mu-
seum again, without the others. At
the library we got books about the
different languages and I began to
learn them again.”

She seemed to expect comment,
but the psychiatrist’s nod was non-
committal.

“I got books in Arabic, Chinese,
Hebrew, Greek, Hindustani, San-
skrit, Anglo-Saxon and Sumerian.”

“Sumerian !”

“Yes. C. J. Good’s ‘A Sumerian

Reading Book.’ ” Stella’s eyes were
shining. “Some of it is in cuneiform
script.”

“I see. Go on.”

“So I came . to work out this
theory. I couldn’t see that things
made sense any other way except
that I must be reincarnated and have
a sort of memory of these other lives,
unless I was inspired, and now I’m
pretty sure it’s not inspiration. Other
boys and girls had no interest in
these things ; why should I have ?
They didn’t think about things like
life and death and time and per-
sonality and other religions— or even
their own religion. How could I be
so interested and know so much,
and learn so fast, if it wasn’t partly
remembering? And stories I read
backed me up. Kipling and—”

“Is there no other possible ex- .
planation ?”

“I can’t think of any. The other
children wouldn’t agree with me, I
know, but I think they are the same
as me only they don’t know they are
remembering anything.”

“Do you believe this theory im-
plicitly?”

“No,” said Stella. “Sometimes I
thought I was positive. Once I asked
our minister if reincarnation could
be true, and he said he didn’t know.
He said he once saw a little whirl-
wind moving along, and when it
came to a haystack it took on a body
of whirling hay, and when it crossed
the road it took on a body of dust,
and if it had come to a pond it
would have been a waterspout.”

“In other words, yes?”

NEW FOUNDATIONS

33

“He meant ‘maybe.’ But the
analogy didn’t seem quite right to
me. It’s good poetry, but after all,
a philosophy of life isn’t only
poetry. Poetry is true, of course, but
you never know quite how it is true
or where it is true. It doesn’t have
fixed limits like material things. You
can’t build your whole life on a lyric
idea. Besides, I told my uncle and
he was furious.”

The psychiatrist began to like
Stella’s uncle.

“How much did you tell your
uncle of all this?”

“Nothing. I just told him I liked
ancient history and things. Pie told
my aunt it was an odd taste but
harmless.”

"You said that on your first visit
you recognized Egyptian writing,”
said Peter, laying a little trap.

“Well, I had seen some in Pete’s
history book,” Stella said candidly.

"Have you worked out a time
schedule for the various incarna-
tions ? Is this the first one in the
Americas ?”

“I don’t know anything about all
that. I don’t really remember much,
if anything. It’s that it all seems to.
come back to me as I see it again.
And there is my poetry. It’s beyond
my years, certainly. The critics all
say it shows extraordinary insight.
If it isn’t inspired, then I must re-
member from past lives, to be so
much older than my years. And yoU
said we can’t imagine anything we
have not seen, so that simplified
things even more.”

“Go on.”

“That’s all. What do you think?
Am I all wrong about this?”

“Do you want mv honest opinion,
Stella?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I think you have worked it all out
very intelligently,” he said slowly,
“and I quite understand how you
came to do so. But I do not think
your theory is true at all. I think
you wished to he away from where
you were— to live away from where
you lived— didn’t von ? And you
were especially eager to get away
from the others' at the museum. You
worked yourself into a semihypnotic
state wandering about alone in
the shadowy galleries— a half-dream
state. Many people have been very
deeply moved, or greatly thrilled, at
seeing things from these ancient
civilizations. Their antiquity ap-
peals strongly to the imagination.
Probably the history hook was your
first glimpse of a world beyond your
everyday life. You mistook the thrill
for a stirring memory. Did you ever
remember anything you had not seen
or read of in this life?”

“No. Not that I could prove,
anyway.”

“Nothing you are positive of, you
mean? I thought so. The books
you read and also those you wrote
were an escape from what you were
living every day, as far away as pos-
sible in space and time, and they
were also an outlet for your creative
energy and imagination, your im-
pulse to write stories and the like.
‘The Star Child’ shows at least the
wish to believe that you did not actu-

ally belong to the family, that you
came from some other source en-
tirely.”

“I knew better by the time I .wrote
it,” Stella said defensively. “But it
made a good story, I thought.”

“Of course it did. And ‘Incarna-
tion In Egypt’ shows the wish to
live somewhere else, in as different a
world as possible. You must have
enjoyed living in Egypt in your
thoughts, reading and writing about
it.”

“Don’t you think reincarnation
can possibly be true ?”

“It has a powerful appeal to the
imagination,” replied Dr. Welles. “It
promises a sort of immortality to
those who can think of no other ; hut
I don’t see much use in living many
lives if one must forget them all—”
“One could grow in them without
remembering.”

“One could grow much better with
the aid of memory, don’t you think?”
“I have heard of a law of conserva-
tion of matter. There might be a law
of conservation of souls.”

“There might be almost anything.
One does not multiply hypotheses
without reason. Have you any evi-
dence for reincarnation ?”

“Many civilizations have believed
in it.”

“I know. By the wav, what is
your religion? Egyptian? Bud-
dhist ?”

“Of course not,” cried Stella in-
dignantly. “Do you think I pray to
cows and cats and beetles?”

“Have you ever lived as an animal
or bird of any sort ?”

NEW FOUNDATIONS

AST— 2S

35

“That wouldn’t have to be.”

“It depends on which religion of
reincarnation you follow. Why was
your uncle so angry with the min-
ister you spoke of?”

“He said it wasn’t Christian.”
“Well, is it? This belief is con-
trary to the whole Judeo-Christian
revelation and to most of our philoso-
phy. Plato believed in a form of it,
and I believe Origen taught some
such doctrine. If you want to take
it seriously you should study the
teachings in its various forms and
find out which is to be accepted and
why. I’ve always followed that hard-
headed old realist Aristotle, myself.
I must admit I have never considered
metempsychosis seriously. I believe
it can be disproved by philosophical
and psychological methods. Do you
think you can prove it to be true?”
“I don’t want to have an imaginary
idea of myself or the world,” pro-
tested Stella. “I’d much rather have
a sound and true one, as you and
Tim and the others think you have.
Until I came here I thought religion
was just something you took on faith
without any evidence or philosophi-
cal reasoning. But . . . but—”

“Let us try to build up a philoso-
phy that you can depend on,” sug-
gested the psychiatrist. “One you
can test and prove. I’ll give you
books to study, and you argue against
them all you can.” He selected a
volume from the shelf. “A practical
man, Aristotle; let’s start with him.
How is your Greek?”

“Oh, this is in both languages,”
cried Stella in delight.

36

“I believe Aquinas has some rele-
vant material in ‘Contra Gentiles,’ ”
said Peter. “Stella, your knowledge
of Egypt is really remarkable, and
your books are extraordinarily inter-
esting.”

“They must reveal a great deal
about me,” said Stella. “Tim said
you could analyze stories and poems
as you do dreams. Could we do
that?”

“Certainly, if you would like to,”
said Dr. Welles. “But don’t let it
discourage you from writing more
about these things of which you have
so much knowledge, which you have
studied so thoroughly.”

“If I have a sound philosophy I
can write more wisely as well as live
more wisely,” said Stella gravely.
“Thank you, Dr. Welles. I’ll try to
find out what can be proved.”

Peter relaxed completely when she
had left, and sighed in relief. One
problem was off his mind. He knew
what had been in the little girl’s
mind, and she had agreed to study
under his direction. It would take
months, perhaps years, to weigh both
sides of the questions she had raised,
but it would be good for all the chil-
dren. Now there remained—

“I’ve got it !”

Peter jumped to his feet and dialed
a number. “I want a plane reserva-
tion,” he said, “at once if possible.”
How slow he had been to see the
obvious !

“Jay? This is Peter Welles. I’m
here in town. I’ve come to talk to

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

your guardians, but I want your per-
mission.”

“But— what do you want to say?”
“I want to tell them about you,”
said the psychiatrist. “You can't
keep the secret much longer ; the
school will unavoidably get publicity,
and they have the right to know di-
rectly from us, before that happens.”
“I thought of all that. But you
must promise—” he hesitated.

“They may overheat what you are
saying?” guessed Peter. “Do you
want me to promise I won’t ask them
to send you to the school ?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“I give you my word. I won’t
even mention the possibility.”

“Then come.”

’ The doctor was there within half
an hour, and the formalities of his
introduction were soon completed.

“I represent,” said Dr. Welles, “a
school for superior children which is
being started on the West Coast.”
“We could not think of sending
Jay away,” said Mrs. Curtis.

“I was not going to ask you to do
so,” said Dr. Welles. “I have an-
other request to make. 1 have come
to ask you to help us there in teach-
ing the children.”

“You must be aware that I have
lost my sight,” replied Mr. Curtis,
“and have done no teaching for many
years. I retired from that profession
in order to devote full time to writing
historical works, some years before
my sight failed.”

“I realize that, sir. But hear me
out. The children I am gathering
for the school are of extraordinary

NEW FOUNDATIONS

brilliance. Although scarcely in
their teens, they have written many
books and earned fame as inventors
and the like, under aliases. I can
prove every word I say. What we
require of our teachers is a sympathy
with the gifted child, ana a wealth of
knowledge and wisdom to share with
the children. They are eager to
learn ; you would merely lie expected
to talk with them for an hour or two
a day. Let me ask you, are you
familiar with the name of James
Vernon Worth?”

“Why, yes. His hooks have been
read to me by my wife. But he is
not a child, surely?”

“He is your son Jay.”

And then Peter told them the
whole story. Their incredulity was
soon overcome, the situation made
clear, and evidence presented— chief
of all the evidence of Jay himself. '
“But, you rascal,” protested his
guardian, “when I read the first
book which you say is y,ours, I dic-
tated a letter to you to be sent to the
author!”

"Yes, uncle,” said Jay, “and it
made me mighty proud, too.”

“Pm not sure whether I ought to
be proud of you, or whether you
played me a shabby trick,” said Mr.
Curtis.

“You ought to be very proud,”
said Peter Welles. “It was not an
unwillingness to confide in you, or
that he meant to deprive you of the
pleasure of knowing what he had
done. These children do not wish
or need adult assistance, any more
than any adult author— if as much.

37

We must never betray their pen
names. Their achievements must be
kept in hiding, under aliases. But
they do need to learn history as you
can teach it, and I have come here
daring to hope that you will do for
these other youngsters what you have
done for Jay.”

“I made him. promise he wouldn’t
ask you to let me go,” said Jay. “But
please, if you do go, may I go with
you ?”

“The whole thing is immensely
appealing,” said Mr. Curtis, “but I
hardly like to consider trying to teach
again—”

“Of course you’ll do it, John,”
said his wife firmly. “You can write
books as well there as here. We
haven’t taken root in this town for-
ever, have we? And Jay must be
with those, other youngsters, but he

won’t go without us. Salary doesn’t
matter— there needn’t be any. I’ll
teach languages, too, if you like I’m
a good linguist. We want to have a
big share in this wonderful thing,
don’t we, John?”

“Yes, we do,” said Mr. Curtis.
“And thank you very much for the
invitation, Dr. Welles.”

So that, thought Peter as the plane
sped him homeward, was that. The
expense of the special trip was well
repaid. He had Jay, and he had two
fine teachers besides. He could start
out the next month to interview more
prospects, without any nagging wor-
ries about either Jay or Stella. More
problems would arise, but they could
be solved in their turn. Everything
was under control. Peter could re-
lax. He slept.

THE END

IN TIMES TO COME

Starting next month is a new three-part novel, “The Wizard of Linn,” by A. E. van
Vogt. A van Vogt novel is always something worth waiting for— and the subject of
this one is the final, key explanation of the strange, contrasting world of the Gods
series, the world of semibarbarians using spaceships and atomic energy by rule of
thumb, of a mighty, ancient civilization smashed. Smashed . . . how?

And the cause of that smashing is the story of the Wizard of Linn.

There’s also a novelette by Jim Blish about the ultimate in hobos. A hobo, you
remember, is a migratory worker— the journeyman specialist. The hobos of Blish’s
yarn “Okie” travel through the galaxy, though— a whole city of them, doing the odd-
jobs of a hundred planets. But not without certain discomforts, stemming from the
politics of an ununified, unco-operative, and generally shoot-first-ask-later attitude of
the planets.

And there’ll be more shorts than usual, I think. The Editor

38

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

REGULATIONS PROVIDE

BY RAYMOND F. JONES

Regulations mean red tape — and red tape can strangle someone
as handily as a hangman s rope. Particularly when the someone
is an alien desperately in need of a spaceship repair job . . .

Illustrated by Orban

There is nothing that a govern-
ment can do that a private citizen
can’t do better— except make war and
Spend money.

That had been the philosophy and
firm conviction of Joe, senior, now
dead and gone these thirty years.
Young Joe Williams was himself
pushing sixty, but he had never

found occasion to take issue with his
father’s belief. Rather, with the
march of years, he had become more
thoroughly convinced of it than ever.

He leaned forward across his desk
a moment to look from the window
of his second-story office to the vast
landing field in front of the building.
He confirmed his first glance. The

REGULATIONS PROVIDE

39

figure he had seen was that of In-
spector O’Conners, red tape artist
deluxe.

What went wrong with a man’s
genes, Joe wondered, to make a bu-
reaucrat out of him? A deep inner
necessity for dependence on the
power of the group? Whatever it
was made it impossible for the red
tape artists to stand on their own
feet, think their own thoughts, and
come to their own conclusions. They
were afraid to spit without the au-
thority of public law which they
could call to mind by paragraph and
line.

And Melvin O’Conners was a
thoroughbred of his kind, Joe
thought sourly. As long as the com-
pany had to endure an Inspection
Office upon the premises, why did
the chief inspector have to be Melvin
O’Conners?

ITis secretary buzzed a moment
later and the inspector came in. You
could spot one of them a block away,
thought Joe. There was something
about the cut of their clothes, the
shine of their shoes, their air of
“You can’t push John Law around,
Bud.”

“They still up there?” asked
O’Conners.

“Well, where would they go?”
growled Joe. “They’ll circle Earth
in that orbit until the next ice age
at the rate you’re unwinding the red
tape. For the sake of a comma in
some regulation you’d let people in
distress hang on a sky hook for”—
he glanced at the clock— “eighteen
hours since they first asked to come

40

in— while you fumble around to de-
termine whether their ancestoral
stock is pure enough to allow them
to set foot on our sacred terra firma.
It hasn’t been six months since nine
of them died because of your pre-
cious regulations. If I were on the
Intergalactic Advisory Mission, I’d
tell everybody to steer so clear of
Sol that you’d feel like we were in
solitary confinement.”

“But, fortunately— for your busi-
ness— you’re not.” The inspector
glanced out at the field lined with
tremendous machine shops, labora-
tories, and hotels— and the more than
a hundred intergalactic ships in vari-
ous stages of repair and disrepair.

“Fortunately, I’m not. The cross
I bear is Emergency Inspection. Do
they land or don’t they ? How long
are you going to let those people—?”
“Stop calling them people. They
probably have six heads and forty-
eight tentacles, and eat their young
for breakfast.”

“Anybody that has brain enough
to transport themselves a hundred
thousand light-years across space is
people in nty book,” said Joe. He
picked up a thick cigar and chomped
heavily on it. “And they’re in
trouble. Do they land or don’t they ?”
“We’re proceeding according to
I. G. Board agreement,” said O’Con-
ners. “Regulations provide—”
“That even if a guy is about dead
he can go ahead and die as long as he
hasn’t got a letter of introduction
from LG.”

“Regulations provide,” continued
the inspector patiently, “that in case

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

of first contact between a visiting
race and a given planet, the repre-
sentatives arriving shall present ade-
quate data for identification which
shall then be verified through the
I. G. Central Operations unit. That
is what we are doing.”

“Even if it kills the strangers.”
“No exceptions were provided or
could be provided for emergency
cases. You know that very well.
You cannot have forgotten the Tro-
jan incident of Malabar Seven. And
so we are proceeding according to
regulations and agreement. Any of
us would get the same treatment
from their planet, wherever that
might be.”

“You mean you haven’t even got
them pegged, yet? I told you yes-
terday they were from Nerane IV
and I pointed it out on the charts and
showed your central operators the
encyclopedic data—”

O’Conners waved disparagingly.
“Your sorter isn’t official. It has to
be verified by our official machines.”
“ ’Sfunny,” said Joe, “that after
all these hundreds of years the word
'official’ is still synonymous with in-
efficiency and general chowder-head-
edness. My sorter gets the data in
fifteen minutes— yours hasn’t got it in
more than eighteen hours.”

“Official sources require accuracy.
We could not afford to be wrong if
the landing of this ship involves vio-
lation of the I. G. B. regulations, or
if these creatures cannot be identi-
fied. Your sorter is not concerned
with such factors, understandably.
You are concerned only with repair-

ing the vessel and making a profit on
the operation.”

“And what a wicked thing that is !
Eh?” said Joe. “We’ve been over
this before. I know when I’m licked,
but when will that obsolete mon-
strosity get its official bowels in gear
and give out with the data ? I’ve had
a crew standing by since yesterday.”

O’Conners didn’t answer. He
looked speculatively around the
plush, luxurious office that was Joe’s
one vice and his only indulgence. He
looked out at the vast properties that
represented as much as a small na-
tion might have once possessed. The
great shops and laboratories rivaled
a government facility.

“We’ll be taking you over one of
these days,” said the inspector. “A
government can’t tolerate a private
enterprise of this scope. This should
belong to the people.”

“Like the Tyrannosaurus,” mut-
tered Joe in a cloud of smoke. “He
must have kicked and jumped and
squealed to the last, too. And you’ve
got just about as much chance now as
he had. As long as there is space,
you bureaucrats will never be on top
again. It took a civil world war to
get your kind off the top of the heap
once, and you’re off for good. In an
expanding economy civilization sim-
ply passes by while you fuss and
holler. It’s only in a shrinking
world that people think they need
bureaucrats and socialists to tell them
what to do.”

O’Conners shook his head sadly.
“The government needs men like
you. It’s tragic that the organizing

REGULATIONS PROVIDE

41

and technical ability you possess
should be coupled with such
atavism.”

He turned to the door. “I’ll send
you an official clearance to bring
them in as soon as— and if— the sorter
verifies the data given by the disabled
craft, and central confirms it.”

He left.

Every time, Joe thought. Every
time it was like this. Sometimes
sooner, sometimes longer. He went
to the window- and looked out upon
the hundred or so craft from every
part of the universe that lay on the
landing field. That they repre-
sented genius incredibly far removed
from his comprehension troubled
O'Conners not at all. One of them, a
huge vessel a mile and a half long
and fifteen hundred feet in diameter
had come almost three million light-
years out of space, the farthest com-
munication that men of Earth had
yet had with other sentient beings.

But O’Conners was not impressed.
He’d kept them in an orbit above
Earth’s barrier screen for three days
while he checked their credentials.

If there had turned up the slight-
est inconsistency in the communica-
tion between their alien minds and
his primitive Earth mentality, he’d
have refused entry to their crippled
and nearly helpless vessel. He
would probably have let them die in
space rather than let them down, Joe
thought bitterly. The bureaucratic
mind !

He stepped hack to the desk and
called his repair superintendent.

42

“Winfield, have you heard anything
new from the Nerane IV?”

“Not for the last five hours. They
might be dead by now if they’re in
any serious personnel trouble
aboard.”

“Yeah, they might be, mightn’t
they? Just like six months ago
when he held the Cordomarians off
until nine of them died. Nine speci-
mens of the most brilliant intellect
we’ve ever known— sacrificed to a
regulation. We’re bringing them
down. It’s not going to happen
again.”

“But O’Conners— !”

“They have an ellipsoidal hull. He
couldn’t tell them from a Croesan
Nightwing or a Hammerlane.”

“As soon as we key the screen to
drop it through, some bright lad in
central will pick up the data. They’re
watching us too closely.”

“We’ll take that chance. People’s
lives are more important than O’Con-
ners’ regulations. Better send out a
boarding party if you haven’t heard
for that long. See if anyone can get
into them. Let me know what their
trouble is.”

“O.K. I’ll send out Perkins and
his crew.”

Joe moved away and stood by the
window again. This out there was
his, he thought savagely, and no bu-
reaucrat was going to regulate him
into murdering his customers. He’d
built up this business from the mod-
est scratch his father had started, and
it was his to use. He only wished
he had someone to pass it on to.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

There was Richard, of course, but
Richard had disappeared fifteen hun-
dred light-years away twelve years
ago. It would be a vain hope to
suppose that Richard would ever in-
herit “Joe’s Service and Repair”.

In the early days of intergalactic
flight, when the super-cee ships were
first brought out, a vessel was little
more than a flying machine shop and
laboratory. It had to be equipped
with facilities for virtually rebuild-
ing itself in case of failure or dis-
aster.

That robbed the ships, especially
the early small ones, of much of
their useful load. Finally, when men
made contact with other intelligent
life they found it was almost the same
among every other group.

For some reason, ninety percent of
other inhabited worlds were almost
diametrically across the galaxy.
When the first meager flights probed
earthward, in response to man’s ex-
plorations, old Joe Williams had
been just a boy. He’d walked
through the alien hulls in ecstatic
rapture. He was only fifteen when
he saw the first crippled ship whose
occupants had managed to land it on
alien earth at the end of its last flight.

They were technicians and navi-
gators, but not engineers. They
could not duplicate or repair the
worn and shattered power plant of
their ship. For five years they lived
as prisoners aboard their ship until
they were able to get transportation
back.

That incident gave him the clue to
what he wanted to do with the rest

REGULATIONS PROVIDE

of his life. This was only the start
of a new frontier of technology.
There would be increasing hoardes
of visitors from other worlds, now
that they were aware that an in-
habited planet in this region had been
located. There would be a place
for JLarthmen who could repair
those alien vessels when the need
came.

There were others who had the
same idea. But Old Joe had got
the jump on them. He saw that
mere skill in terrestrial technology
would not be enough. After he
graduated from the -best schools on
Earth, he spent five years hopping
from one planetary system to another
studying where he could, picking up
clues and scraps of information about
other world technologies, how their
spaceships were pow T ered and run,
the biology of their occupants, the
needs that he might be able to supply
on Earth.

It wasn’t easy. The worlds across
the galaxy w'ere just beginning to set
up the First Galactic Council. There
were suspicions and doubts, and un-
easy meetings. But he obtained
enough.

Returning to Earth, he bought
twenty-five square miles of American
desert and set up business in a veri-
table shack. For three years he had
no customers.

Then he dickered with the govern-
ment for that impounded vessel
which had been abandoned when he
was a boy. It was decided that, since
the original owners had not come for
it by now that a precedent might

43

well be established by selling it to
Joe for a big chunk of his few re-
maining bucks.

And he rebuilt it. It was a pip, in
view of his knowledge and experi-
ence he’d gained from his travels.
He’d run across an affhost identical
drive among the Irdians. But he
was too broke to do more than take
it on a single test run to Mars and
back.

That was enough. Somehow the
news got around the galaxy faster
than the ship itself could have done.

Joe was made.

That was the beginning. The in-
fant FGA sponsored a program of
approved service and repair stations
at strategic points throughout the
galaxy and J oe was automatically for
it because by then he knew more
than any other Earthman about for-
eign ships and drives.

It had been a reputation for Young
Joe to maintain— and he’d maintained
it. If only there were someone to
turn it over to—

As usual, the politicians came
pounding hard on the heels of the
scientists, bent on regulating their
betters. Some worlds were more
prone to this tendency than others,
but Eartb was right up front in this
respect. There had been a few un-
fortunate incidents in the meeting of
alien cultures— but far fewer than
even the most hopeful had supposed.
An almost universal fact was that by
the time a race had reached the stars
it had begun to mature.

Joe turned back to the desk on

which lay the data on the strangers
.from Nerane IV. Their planet was
one of the most nonterrestrian so far
encountered. Little commerce passed
between its peoples and the rest of
the galaxy, yet their ships occasion-
ally called on exploratory or cultural
missions, though none had been to
Earth before.

The creatures had a hard exo-
skeleton. Stiff, bony appendages
supported them on a planet eight
times the mass of Earth. They lived
in a yellow-brown fog of nitrogen
peroxide at a pressure of about one
sixth Earth atmosphere.

In an almost symbiotic relation-
ship they lived with 'another species,
a small, remotely monkeylike crea-
ture called mensa. These were con-
trolled by telepathic forces and per-
formed the physical work which the
clumsy exoskeletons of the more in-
telligent creatures did not permit.

Joe read through th^ data from
the massive library his company had
accumulated on a hundred thousand
planets and cultures. He did not
have the slightest conception of what
kind of metabolism an atmosphere of
nitrogen peroxide could support— or
even if it were necessary to the
creatures’ metabolism. But, at any
rate, it was reported that their ships
were provided with such an atmos-
phere.

Winfield called as he finished the
file.

“Perkins is in contact with them,”
he said. “They were just about to
give up and go away. He didn’t think
it necessary to go aboard since they

44

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

seemed to be doing all right for the
time being. One of them is very
sick, they said. That’s one reason
why they’re in such a steam to get
the ship repaired.”

“All right. We still have no of-
ficial clearance on them. Get them
down. Use one of the pressure hang-
ars, just in case. We wouldn’t want
to smash them with our atmospheric
pressure in case of accident. And
I’d hate to have theirs get loose on
the field.”

“Think we ought to have quarters
for the crew ?”

“Do you know how many there
are ?”

“Just two, they say.”

“Two? On a ship that size?” Joe
recalled the photographs and plans of
Neranian ships. “I’d say there
ought to be a hundred of them at
least. Something funny if only two
are aboard. Anyway, we’d better
get quarters ready. It might be
necessary to evacuate the ship to
work on it.”

♦

It was about a half hour later that
the dark oval of the ship appeared
over the field. The service ship in
which Perkins and his crew rode
followed at a little distance, talking
the strangers down.

It wasn’t without reason that Old
Joe had picked a desert site for his
operations. Some of the visitors
were sloppy pilots near a planet, and
at other times ships came in almost
completely out of control, crashing
all over the landscape in a futile at-
tempt to set down normally.

But the Nerane ship was ade-
quately controlled. Joe wouldn’t
have called it a first-class landing,
but it was good enough. Pie saw
Perkins land a short distance away.
Within minutes the ship was being
towed towards the large, pressurized
hangar where no damage would he
done if the obnoxious atmosphere
within the ship were to get free.

Joe turned away. He would have
liked to have gone out and handled
the joh himself, but there were too
many other matters at hand. Too
many executive matters. Joe gagged
on that word. It made him think of
plump, jolly men at luncheon clubs.

It was six-thirty, and the evening
crews had come on, when he folded
up his papers and decided to call it a
day. Many of the customers insisted
on continuous attention to their
needs, so Joe had long ago gone on
a round-the-clock basis. He won-
dered how they were coming on the
Nerane ship.

Even as he thought about it, his
phone buzzed and Litchfield, Chief
Repair Engineer, spoke :

“Joe? This Nerane IV ship is a
screwball setup. We can’t find any-
thing wrong with the thing. It’s a
heavy-water outfit with a type eight
drive and a few modifications. As
far as we can see it’s in perfect work-
ing order. The Neranians say it
goes all right up to about half cee,
but the super-cee won’t throw in.
We’ve checked it with the Manson
field, and it works perfectly as far as
we can see. I don’t think these soap-
brains know how to run the ship.”

REGULATIONS PROVIDg

45

‘'Were there only two of them
aboard as Perkins said?”

“That’s right.”

“How about their mensa? That’s
the little monkeys that they use to do
the heavy work. Telepathic sym-
biosis.”

“Didn’t see anything of them. Just
these two crabshells.”

“Well— it’s none of our business if
things aren’t according to Hoyle
with the customers. You’re sure
they’re Neranians?”

“I’m not sure of anything. They
look like the pictures in our library
books.”

“I was thinking maybe they had
bought the ship from the Neranians
and perhaps had not been instructed
properly.”

“But look— how could they get
clear out here, if the super-cee had
never been working That’s about
ninety thousand light-years, isn’t it?”
“Something like that. Maybe
something’s conked out that the
Hanson field doesn’t show. There
could he a first time. Take the ship
up on a run and see what the trouble
is. That’s about the only way.”
“Yeah, but I’d like to get away
from that, unless we could dump the
gas. If we don’t, it means wearing
the barrel bottoms, and it’s no fun
riding in those in a ship that’s buck-
ing its super-cee.”

“Think of something else then—
Oh, let’s take it up. I’ll go with you.
Get things ready. I’ll he down in a
minute. While you’re waiting, try
a cerebral analogue on them.”

“We tried to. They refused to

have anything to do with it.
Wouldn’t let their brains be tinkered
with. A coverup, I suspect, to keep
us from finding out how small a
quantity of the stuff they’ve got.”

“Maybe I can talk them into it.
Hang on.”

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the
business involved merely straight
mechanical repair. They could have
repaired hulls, replaced reactor piles,
counteracted wild radioactivity, re-
built drives, or anything else in the
mechanical or nuclear line, but in
nearly every job they had to deal
with— usually contend with— the per-
sonality and alien thinking of the
crew. It w r as tough enough trying
to figure out how to repair a drive
manufactured two million light-years
away on a planet that no Earthman
had yet seen bv creatures whose
thoughts were only remotely like
those of men— but when members of
the species, who were ignorant of the
principles of their own machines,
tried to tell Joe’s men how to fix
things, then it got complicated.

That’s why the biological and
psychological departments of his
company were nearly as big as the
mechanical.

He went to the lock in front of the
closed hangar and donned one of the
coated steel, articulated joint suits
w'hich would enable him to enter the
atmosphere of the ship. These were
the uncomfortable outfits known as
“barrel bottoms” in which it was
sometimes Secffissary to work inside
the foreign vessels. They would
stand anything from a vacuum to a

46

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

hundred atmospheres pressure, and
were completely noncorrosive in any
liquid or gas that anyone had thought
about to date.

There was no opening for vision.
The helmets were faceless steel
blanks. Sight was by viewscreen en-
tirely— a small plate set in front of the
Wearer’s face.

Joe stepped inside the hangar be-
fore he remembered to turn his plate
on, and stumbled around in blind-
ness.

“Where are you going—?” He
heard Litchfield’s voice.

“H'aven’t worn one of these for so
long—” he mumbled while his fingers
sought the controls. “There—”

The interior of the hangar showed
on his plate. Floodlights poured il-
lumination over the polished hull.
Beautiful, seamless construction, Joe
noted.

“Where’s your cerebropath? In-
side?”

“No. We found some terminals
in the ships lock so we ran some
leads and put our end outside. It’s
over here.”

In spite of the paramagnetic assist-
ance, Joe waddled awkwardly in the
heavy suit. On the other side of the
ship he came to a panel of apparatus
with a cable of leads running into the
open lock door of the ship. On a
screen, he saw the interior. The two
Nepmians were looking at him
through a thick yellowish brown
haze that was the atmosphere in
which they lived.

He had long been accustomed to
Regulations provide

appearances of foreign creatures,
which were repulsive by Earth stand-
ards, lmt these two specimens were
among the most unbeautiful he had
ever seen.

He stepped up to the instrument
and spoke to them, the machine auto-
matically making a semantic transfer
of his language meanings into theirs,
“I am Joe Williams.” he said. “You
have heard of me, of course, since
von have come here for repairs,”
“Your name is well known
throughout this and many other
galaxies,” said one of them. He
couldn’t tell which. The. voice that
spoke was not theirs, of course, but
only the electromechanical repro-
ducer of the instrument.

‘‘We felt sure that you could re-
pair our ship,” continued the
Neranian. “We have far to go, and
one of us is sick. We cannot make
use of our super-cee drive. We have
been disappointed by the report of
your technicians that they can find
nothing wrong with the mechanism.”
“Our tests show the super-cee to
be operating,” said Joe. “We
thought perhaps it would be best to
take the ship out for a trial run. You
might he able to demonstrate the
trouble better that way, however, we
could possibly save time if you would
allow a cerebral analogue check.”
“This means mind reading—?”
“Well . . . not exactly—”

“I fear we cannot submit. We do
not understand your meaning. The
test is unfamiliar to us. You will,
naturally, excuse our suspicions.”
“Of course. But the test is based

on a simple premise. In every race
it has been found that the artifacts
of the culture have analogous struc-
tures in the brain cells of the species.
Very frequently, when we find a
complex piece of equipment which
we cannot analyze, we can discover
its means of operation by means of
analogues derived from the funda-
mental structure of the brain of the
creating species.”

The two Neranians were silent, as
if conferring with each other for a
moment. Then the voice came again.
"We cannot permit it We would
prefer that von make a check flight.”

Joe shrugged inside his suit. “As
you wish.”

The cerebropath was moved inside
the ship. Joe and Litchfield went
aboard with two young technicians
named Barnes and Hamilton.

In the murky atmosphere of the
ship, Joe was sure his suit was leak-
ing. He would have sworn he could
smell the foul stuff the Neranians
lived in.

Must he getting old, he thought.
He remembered when he was a kid
and his father had taken him through
the first ships from out of the dis-
tant galaxies. He remembered the
kind, ugly faces of those first visitors
he’d met. But it was just as well
that that kind of thrill didn’t last
forever, he supposed. Nobody could
live all his life on the high emotional
plane he enjoyed when he was a kid.

The ship glided out of the open
doors of the hangar under the guid-
ance of the ground crew. It was
towed far out beyond the shops to

48

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

the desert testing-stand field.

Joe watched the Neranians’ han-
dling of the ship with a critical eye.
“I thought you people always used
your niensa,” he said abruptly.

The two at the control panel
seemed to stiffen, he thought after-
wards. They hesitated,, then one
spoke. “We are trying to get away
from them. It is cumbersome to de-
pend on them. We have been trying
a surgical technique to enable us to
do without them.”

Joe grunted. It didn’t look as if
they had been very successful. They
were clumsy in their manipulation of
the ccyitrols.

“Head out at right angles to the
plane of the ecliptic,” he ordered. To
his companions, he said, “You three
go down and watch the engines.
When the sub-cees get up to limit,
I’ll come back there and try to throw
in the manuals on the super-cee.”

The three men ducked awkwardly
through the low corridors. The ship
was designed with paragravity con-
trols for horizontal walking instead
of vertical climbing.

Fortunately, the Neranians were
no more than a foot shorter than the
Earthmen. Occasionally, there were
ships in which it was impossible for
a man to get about through the small
openings that fitted the builders.

As the ship sped swiftly upward,
Joe watched the indicators. As far
as he could see, everything was func-
tioning well.

“All right,” he said to the Ne-
ranians. “I’ll go back and try the
super-cee from the engine room. If

it works all right, you cut it out after
a couple of minutes, and we’ll work
on it from up here. You have to cut
it off, remember. Once it’s on, we
can’t get into it from down there be-
cause of the field buildup.”

The creatures gave the Neranian
equivalent of a nod. Joe ducked and
clumped his way through the low,
narrow passages to the far rear of
the ship.

“There is nothing wrong with this
ship,” said Litchfield. “We’ve gone
over every item of the super-cee.”

“Well, we’ll soon know. Get be-
hind the shield.” Joe stepped up to
the intricate panel. The manipula-
tions were extremely involved and
required great exactness to keep the
ship from vanishing in very small
particles of stardust when the faster-
than-light drive came on. Finally,
it was done, and he squeezed a pair
of handles, the Neranian equivalent
of a relay push button. Instantly, a
copper haze surrounded the mass of
equipment beyond the panels, and
the meter needles swung over.

“See?” said Litchfield. “Nothing
wrong with it.”

Joe watched the panels in silence.
The engineer was right. There was
no question about it. But why had
the Neranians come to him with a
perfectly good ship and asked for
repairs ?

“Let’s go back and have a talk
with our friends,” he said. There’s
just the bare possibility that there’s
trouble in the relays and these birds
didn’t have sense enough to try the

REGULATION'S PROVIDE

49

engine room manuals before yelling
for help.”

The four of them left the engine
room, swinging the automatic bulk-
head door behind them. The next
chamber through which they passed
was a mechanical storage room.

Joe pushed on and shoved against
the next bulkhead door. He shoved
again, then leaned on it hard and
swore. ‘‘What goes on ?”

Suddenly, Litchfield went to the
harrier behind them and pushed. It
was locked. The engineer matched
Joe’s swearing and looked at his
boss.

“Locked— the mechanicals con-
trolled from up front. Does it make
sense ?”

Joe expelled air slowly through his
teeth. “It begins to,” he said. “It
begins to.”

“I don’t get it,” said young
Barnes, the technician. Fear edged
his voice.

“This ship is hot,” said Joe.
“That’s our answer.”

“Hot?” said Hamilton. “You
mean radioactive? We checked—”

“No. It’s a vulgar term common
in my Dad’s day. There was some
of it then, but almost none now. It
means that those two clamshells up
front just took off with the ship with-
out asking anybody’s permission. In
plain language, they stole it.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Litch-
field.

“They aren’t Neranians at all.
They must be very closely related,
but they’re not the same species. We
should have known that by the ab-

sence of the ntensa. That story about
surgical modification is a lot of guff.

“This ship is designed for opera-
tion by mensa. There are handles
and buttons and wheels, but nothing
to fit the claws of that pair up front.”

“Well, it still doesn’t make sense.
Why did they come to us? Why all
the talk about failure of the super-
cee? Most of all, where do we go
from here?”

“I suspect they’re probably a pair
of pretty desperate criminals. Thugs
are thugs in any language— and gen-
erally not very bright. Setting the
automatic controls of the super-cee
requires fine digital manipulation.
They simply couldn’t do it. They’ve
come on sub-cee from wherever they
swiped the ship. They didn’t even
know about the engine manuals, I
suppose, or else they couldn’t even
set them. They hoped to get us to
start the thing on automatics, and
then planned to get rid of us some-
how. It might have been a little
tough unless they have weapons that
would go through these suits easily.
But we made it- perfectly simple for
them, bless our little hearts. We of-
fered to walk right into their trap.

“As to where we go from here—
I don’t think they’re worrying much
about it. But we’d better. Prob-
ably the only atoms of free oxygen
aboard are in these tanks of ours.
Mine says”— he scanned the indi-
cators beside the viewplate in front
of his face— “about six hours to go.”

“I’ve got eight,” said Litchfield.
“Maybe we could even it up some
way.”

SO

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“Mine’s seven,” said Hamilton,
“and we can’t even it lip. There’s no
provision for decoupling the tanks in
an atmosphere like this. Which is a
neat piece of design.”

“I’ve got four here,” said Barnes.
His voice was on the verge of crack-
ing, it seemed to Joe. “I’ll be seeing
you, boys.”

“Cut it out,” said Joe uneasily.
“We’ll get out of here and have clam
chowder for desert. Though I must
admit the ‘how’ of doing so eludes
me at the moment. Four hours— and
they’ve souped this up to about eight
cee, I’d judge— we’ll be a long way
from home.”

They moved slowly about the
room. There were two other cham-
bers open to them, one on either side,
but there was no exit. They decided
that one contained the machinery for
producing and circulating the foul
nitrogen peroxide atmosphere. The
other was a storage chamber for the
heavy water used in the reactor.

There was a small store of tools,
but none that would dent or burn
the doors. Barnes and Hamilton
had brought along their kits, but they
held nothing that would help.

They sat down on rows of can-
nisters. Joe looked about at the
blank-faced, monstrous-looking suits
that housed his companions. They
were silent, thinking that this was a
stupid way of winding up. There
was Barnes with only four hours of
oxygen to go. They couldn’t share
theirs with him.

“Why couldn’t we wreck the at-

RF.GULATIONS PROVIDE

mosphere plant ?” asked Barnes sud-
denly. “Maybe we could even find
a way to discharge it into space.
That would fix those clamshells’ lit-
tle red wagon good.”

“Yes, but what good would it do
us?” said Joe. “We’d still be locked
in here and no way out.”

“We’d be taking them with us,
anyway—” Barnes muttered sav-
agelv.

“Cut it out,” said Joe. “This is
entirely impersonal. Get your gray
matter agitating on the physical
problem of getting out. You can
hate them afterwards. Now, as T
see it, the problem is to persuade
them to open up the door volun-
tarily. We can’t possibly get out un-
less they do.”

“You put it so neatly,” said Ham-
ilton. “What are we going to do?
Offer a free ride to the one that
opens up first?”

They were young, Joe thought,
and they’d never been trained for
danger. Life was too soft for kids
nowadays. It was probably the first
time these two youngsters had ever
considered the possibility of fatal cir-
cumstances occurring to them.

They wouldn’t be of much help.

He turned to Litchfield. “What
do you think ?”

“I’m thinking, but there’s not
much production so far. I don’t see
what we can do to make them turn
us loose.”

“Irritate ’em.”

“Like itching powder under their
shells, huh?”

“Maybe there’s something here

51

that we could pour into the atmos-
phere system. Let’s have a look any-
way. Tear open some of these cans.”

He glanced at the clock face in the
helmet A full half hour had passed
since the doors had first been
clamped. Three and a half to go—
for Barnes.

Litchfield held up an open can.
He had a steel claw full of mushy
substance. “Must be food. Do you
know what they eat?”

“No. Keep going and keep think-
ing.”

The two technicians were half-
heartedly obeying Joe’s instructions,
but they had no enthusiasm for the
task. They’d given up completely,
he thought. He and Litchfield would
have to carry them.

He kept on, opening boxes and
storage cabinets, trying to identify
the substances encountered, his mind
constantly examining and rejecting
each item for possible means of at-
tracting the captors to the locked
chamber.

He wandered on into the chamber
where the huge tanks of heavy water
were stored.

“We haven’t found a supply of
drinking water, have we?” said Joe.

“All food as far as I can tell
here,” said Litchfield.

“On a planet with an atmosphere
of nitrogen peroxide I wonder if
there wouldn’t be an absence of open
bodies of water. Perhaps the me-
tabolism of any life there would have
to exist without water.”

“I don’t know,” said Litchfield.
“Why? Well— I suppose not. Con-

52

stant reaction would produce nitric
acid rain. In time there would be
no more water because the process
would go to termination. On a
planet like that they’d probably han-
dle water the way we do nitroglyc-
erine. So—” Litchfield suddenly
shouted. “Joe! That’s it! We’ll
irritate these crabs until they’ll swear
they’re being broiled alive.”

“I don’t get it,” said Hamilton.
“What are you going to do ?”

“Pipe some of this water over to
the atmosphere pumps Those crabs
will be breathing nitric acid vapor-
providing they breathe. If they don’t,
I’ll bet it will sting their hides and
send them back here yammering to
get in.”

“Yeah . v . yeah ... it might do
it,” breathed Barnes. His voice was
almost pitiful at this apparent re-
prieve.

“Well, let’s not bank on it until it’s
done,” Joe growled. “This won’t be
easy with what we’ve got to work
with.”

“Turn about will have to be within
an hour—” Barnes murmured.

They found a coil of tubing among
the supplies. It was soft enough to
bend, but it couldn’t be melted or
soldered with the small torch that
their kits contained. They had to
improvise a coupling to the tank out-
let. The tithing was too soft to per-
mit tight clamp. It’s size would only
permit a butt joint.

The makeshift flange coupling
that they finally devised cost thefn a
full half hour. And they still had to

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

provide an inlet to the gas system.

While Barnes and Hamilton cut
into the tough metal of the ducts just
ahead of the blowers, Joe and Litch-
field made some nozzles and fitted
them crudely to the end of the line.
The height of the tank provided
some standpipe pressure, and the
blower made a partial vacuum in the
duct so the)' believed the water
would he broken up sufficiently.

They inserted the nozzles and
turned the water on. It sprayed out
with satisfying sharpness. They
packed the hole tightly to improve
the spray. Then they sat back to
wait.

“How long do you think it will
take?” asked Barnes hopefully.

“No telling,” said Joe. “It will
take a while to build up sufficient
concentration of acid for them to no-
tice. We’re a long way from the
control room—”

Nobody said anything. An hour
and a half left. Past turn-about time
for' 'Barnes. They were going to
have to watch him die, Joe thought.
But they wouldn’t see him. Hidden
behind the blank steel face of the hel-
met, his face wouldn’t be seen by
anyone. It would be like dying all
alone.

“You lie down,” he said abruptly.
“Breathe as slowly as possible. Close
your eyes and stop stewing. The rest
of us will get busy and rig up some
kind of an electrolysis setup so that
the moment we get out of here, we’ll
blow out one of these water tanks
and rig up the other one to collect
some oxygen. We can get in there

and equalize our suit supplies and re-
plenish them. Maybe a couple of us
can hole up in the tank and let the
others run the ship back home by
using the supply of the four suits.
Take it easy, Barnes. We’re all go-
ing to get out of this.”

He didn’t believe that any more,
he thought, but it helped to say it.
The water line had cost them too
much time. Turn-about was too far
gone, even with such added velocity
as they might obtain during return.
Litchfield could go another hour and
a half. He might make it alone.

The work kept their minds from
degenerating into circularity of
thought. They had to exercise their
brains to rip out the right power lines
while they were hot, and feed them
to the terminals they had rigged up.
With a collector for the oxygen and
hydrogen, they were all ready to be
inserted in a tank as soon as the gas
could he blown free by opening the
chambers to space.

And then they had done all that
they could do. There was nothing
at all to do but wait. They lay on
the floor to conserve their oxygen.
Toe kept thinking maybe there was
something they had overlooked—
something utterly simple that would
enable them to move right out of the
chamber.

Barnes had been quiet for a long
time. Joe wanted to talk to the
boy, but he couldn’t think of any-
thing to say. It was no good telling
him he wasn’t going to die— because
it was a thousand to one chance he
; «was.

REGULATIONS PROVIDE

S3

When there was only fifteen min-
utes supply left to Barnes, Joe said,
“Barnes— ?”

Only after a long pause did the
technician answer, and then his voice
was weak and sleepy sounding.
“Yes-?”

“I’m sorry, kid. I thought I was
smart breaking the regulations and
letting these crabs down. A regula-
tion would have sent them away, and
none of us would be here now.”

“It’s O.K.,” said Barnes, and his
voice sounded more secure than it
had at any time since they had been
trapped. “It’s not bad this way, I
feel just kind of sleepy. I guess
they call it anoxia, don’t they? Hope
you guys make it. Be sure to see
Mary. Tell her I wasn’t even scared
a bit.”

And then they heard the scratch-
ing at the door. Unbelieving, they
listened, and heard it again. The
three of them scrambled to their
feet as swiftly as possible in the
clumsy armor. They hid behind the
door, and waited for it to open a
crack.

Joe got his steel fingers into it and
jerked. The creature on the other
side stumbled and fell into the room,
threshing weakly on the floor. His
skin, visible between the joints of the
exoskeleton was livid with acid burn,
and his eyes were nearly shut.

“Take care of Barnes,” Joe or-
dered the other two. “I’ll go up
front and turn us around.”

“The other one might be armed—”
Litchfield warned.

54

“It won’t matter if he’s in as bad
condition as this one. Block this
door and come up in three minutes
if we don’t turn.”

Joe had little fear of opposition
after seeing what the acid had done
to the one creature, but he kept a
sharp watch as he came into the con-
trol chamber.

He needn’t have. The creature
was slumped in the cradle that sup-
ported him before the panel of con-
trols. He saw Joe but made no
move. The cerebropath was still op-
erating, and he spoke.

“We . . . didn’t know what had
happened to you. We thought you
were . . . taking care of engines.
Didn’t know you were locked in—”

A liar to the last. Joe smothered a
temptation to crash his steel fist into
that face. He unfastened the straps
and dumped the creature to the floor.
Swiftly, he cut out the super-cee
drive. The controls worked perfect-
ly, as he had known they would. The
creatures had been lying from the
first.

He turned the ship around with
the reaction motors, checked his po-
sition. He thought the ship had
moved in a straight line since take-
off. He reversed the heading a hun-
dred and eighty degrees: That would
put them close. Later, he could cor- •
rect for small errors. He threw in
the super-cee again and locked it.

rHe started back to the rear of the
ship. The creature or, the floor
stirred, but Joe knew there was no
fight left in it. The acid vapor still
poured through the ship, and there

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

was no way to get it out now.
They’d have to take it until they got
back to Earth.

He returned to the rear of the
ship. The two armored figures were
still bending over the form of Barnes.

“He died,” said Litchfield. “We
got the oxygen generator going, but
it is too slow building up pressure.
He was almost gone the last time he
Spoke to us.”

Red tape, Joe thought. Red tape
would have saved young Barnes. If
they had been careful enough to
theck the incoming ships and passen-
gers adequately, Barnes would be
alive and home with Mary.

O’Conners was right, he thought
dully. You had to be accurate. You
couldn’t afford a slip. This was
what happened when you slipped.

And to be absolutely sure, you
had to be a dealer in red tape.

Joe turned away from the dead
technician. From now on his place
would he known throughout the sys-
tems as the house of red tape. He’d
make O’Conners’ office look like the
sloppiest port of entry anywhere.
Joe Williams would be the king of
red tape.

It was- well past sun-up when
they brought the ship back over the
field. Navigational corrections on
the Nerane instruments had taken
longer than they had thought.

Barnes’ wife was waiting by the
administration building in the new
yellow car that Barnes had been
quite proud of. Wailing to take
him home, and Joe would have to

tell her that her husband was never
coming home again.

O’Conners was there, too. The
three men climbed down from the
ship, their suits still on. O’Conners
advanced towards them.

“Mr. Williams—?” He laughed
faintly at the blank steel faces. “I
presume one of you gentlemen is Mr.
Williams.”

No one said anything. Joe hated
him because he had been so right
about the regulations.

“There’ll be serious consequences
from you admitting this ship without
clearance,” said O’Conners. “Our
report from Nerane IV shows that
this ship has been stolen. We will
have to commandeer such of your
facilities as are necessary to impound
the ship and the crew. As for your
breaking regulations, there may be
some amelioration in the fact that
you made possible the capture of the
ship and the thieves—”

“They’re dead,” said Joe toneless-
ly. “One of our boys is dead, too.”

O’Conners seemed taken aback.
“That’s very serious. It greatly
complicates matters. Regulations
provide for an investigation by the
Mission in the case of death of one
species aboard the commercial vessel
of another.”

“I said one of our boys was dead,”
repeated Joe. “Don’t regulations
provide for any sympathy or con-
solation? Don’t they allow you any
expression of human feeling what-
ever?”

“Of course,” said O’Conners
hastily. “The department will ex-

RF.GULATIONS PROVIDE

55

press official condolences to— the next
of kin. Ill have to check with cen-
tral, however, to determine if I’m
authorized to speak in the name of
the department or if it must come
from higher up. You know 7 how
rigid organization is.”

‘‘Yes— I know,” said Joe.

He had been wrong,, he thought
with fierce, satisfaction. Red tape
wasn't the way. Red tape wasn’t
synonymous with the precautionary,
careful thinking that Joe should have
done.

Joe leaned over and picked up a
two-inch bar of steel that had been
carelessly dropped on the field. In
the steel hands of the armor suit he
slowly twisted it until it sheared in
two. He dropped the pieces on the
ground. He advanced on O’Conners.
The inspector looked from side to
side at Joe’s companions uneasily.
“What are you doing—?”

Joe reached out swiftly and
clamped him between the two steel
arms. The inspector squealed and
wriggled loose. Joe let him drop to
the dusty ground.

For a moment, O’Conners looked
from one to the other of the faceless
men. “You’ll pay for this! I’ll
sue—”

They advanced again. The dishev-
eled man turned and ran in panic
across the field.

Yes, he’d pay, Joe thought tiredly.
But it was worth it to see that red
tape artist scrambling in the dust.

He shuddered when he thought back
to that moment when he’d almost be-
lieved that O’Conners’ w r ay was
right.

That young Barnes had died be-
cause of carelessness in dealing with
the strangers was bitter knowledge.
But regulations piled on regulations
were not the cure for carelessness.

The red tape promoters added law
to law and pretended it was wisdom.
They demanded obedience to regu-
lation merely for the sake of regula-
tion, and they had long ceased to
think outside the scope of their'
sacred rules.

But they betrayed themselves
when their laws did not cover the
situation at hand. There had been
the Trojan incident of Malabar
Seven. There had been the death of
the nine Cordomarians, And there
was the death of Barnes.

There was no simple answer. All
the laws in creation could not cover
all the cases of emergency aboard
interstellar ships. Each had to be
made a separate case, and sometimes
you could make mistakes that way.
But not as many as by the blind ap-
plication of blanket regulations. The
fight that Joe had carried on for so
long to have the regidations modified
would have to go on.

He turned back to the building
and changed from the steel armor
suit. Then he went across to the
girl who was still waiting in the yel-
low car.

THE END

56

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

THE MERCENARIES

BY H. BEAM PIPER

Once, wars were won by maneuvering hired fighting
men; now wars are different — and the hired experts
are different. But the human problems remain!

Illustrated by Brush

Duncan MacLeod hung up the
suit lie had taken off, and sealed his
shirt, socks and underwear in a laun-
dry envelope hearing his name and
identity-number, tossing this into one
of the wire baskets provided for the
purpose. Then, naked except for the
plastic identity disk around his neck,
he went over to the desk, turned in
his locker key, and passed into the
big room beyond.

Four or five young men, probably
soldiers on their way to town, were
coining through from the other side.
Like MacLeod, they wore only the
plastic disks they had received in e t-
change for the metal ones they wore
inside the reservation, and they were
being searched by attendants who
combed through their hair, probed
into ears and nostrils, peered into
mouths with tiny searchlights, and
employed a variety of magnetic and
electronic detectors.

To this search MacLeod sub-

mitted wearily. Lie had become quite
a connoisseur of security measures
in fifteen years’ research and devel-
opment work for a dozen different
nations, but the Tonto Basin Re-
search Establishment of the Phila-
delphia Project exceeded anything
he had seen before. There were
gray-haired veterans of the old Man-
hattan Project here, men who had
worked with Fermi at Chicago, or
with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos,
twenty years before, and they swore
in amused exasperation when they
thought of how the relatively mild
regulations of those days had irked
them. And yet, the very existence
of the Manhattan Project had been
kept a secret from all but those en-
gaged in it, and its purpose from
most of them. Today, in 1965, there
might have been a few wandering
tribesmen in Somaliland or the Kir-
ghiz Steppes who had never heard
of the Western Union’s Philadelphia

THE MERCENARIES

57

Project, or of the Fourth Komin-
tern’s Red Triumph Five-Year Plan,
or of the Islamic Kaliphate’s Al-
Borak Undertaking, or of the Ibero-
American Confederation’s Cavor
Project, hut every literate person in
the world knew that the four great
power-blocs were racing desperately
to launch the first spaceship to reach
the Moon and build the Lunar
fortress that would insure world
supremacy.

He turned in the nonmagnetic
identity disk at the desk on the other
side of the search room, receiving
1 5 ic metal one he wore inside the res-
ervation, and with it the key to his
inside locker. He put on the clothes
he had left behind when he had
passed out, and filled his pockets
with tlye miscellany of small articles
he had not been allowed to carry off
the reservation. He knotted the gar-
ish necktie affected by the civilian
workers and in particular by mem-
bers of the MacLeod Research Team
to advertise their nonmilitary status,
lit his pipe, and walked out into the
open gallery beyond.

Karen Hilquist was waiting for
him there, reclining in one of the
metal chairs. She looked cool in the
belted white coveralls, with the white
turban bound around her yellow hair,
and very beautiful, and when he saw
her, his heart gave a little bump, like
a geiger responding to an ionizing
particle. It always did that, although
they had been together for twelve
years, and married for ten. Then she
saw him and smiled, and he came

58

over, fanning himself with his sun
helmet, and dropped into a chair
beside her.

“Did you call our center for a
jeep?” he asked. When she nodded,
he continued : ‘T thought you would,
so I didn’t bother.”

For a while, they sat silent, look-
ing with bored distaste at the swarm
of steel-helmeted Army riflemen and
tommy-gunners guarding the trans-
fer platforms and the vehicles gate.
A string of trucks had been passed
'under heavy guard into the clearance
compound ; they were now unload-
ing supplies onto a platform, at the
other side of which other trucks were
backed waiting to receive the ship-
ment. A hundred feet of bare con-
crete and fifty armed soldiers sepa-
rated these from the men and trucks
from the outside, preventing con-
tact.

“And still they can’t stop leaks,”
Karen said softly. “And we get
blamed for it.”

MacLeod nodded and started to
say something, w r hen his attention
was drawn by a commotion on the
driveway. A big Tucker limousine
wdth an O.D. paint job and the sin-
gle-starred flag of a brigadier gen-
eral was approaching, horning impa-
tiently. In the back seat MacLeod
could see a heavy-shouldered figure
with the face of a bad-tempered great
Dane— General Daniel Nayland, the
military commander of Tonto Basin.
The inside guards jumped to atten-
tion and saluted ; the barrier shot up
as though rocket-propelled, and the
car slid through ; the barrier slammed

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

down behind it. On the other side,
the guards were hurling themselves
into a frenzy of saluting. Karen
made a face after the receding car
and muttered something in Hindu-
stani. She probably didn’t know the
literal meaning of what she had called
General Nayland, but she understood
that it was a term of extreme op-
probrium.

Her husband contributed : “His
idea of Heaven would be a huge

THE MERCENARIES

research establishment, where he’d
be a five-star general, and Galileo,
Newton, Priestley, Dalton, Max-
well, Planck and Einstein would be
tech sergeants.”

“And Marie Curie and Lise Meit-
ner would be Wac corporals,” Karen
added. “He really hates all of us,
doesn’t he?”

“He hates our Team,” MacLeod
replied. “In the first place, we’re a
lot of civilians, who aren’t subject to

5 ?

his regulations and don’t have to
salute him. We’re working under
contract with the Western Union,
not with the United States Govern-
ment, and as the United States par-
ticipates in the Western Union on a
treaty basis, our contract has the
force of a treaty obligation. It gives
us what amounts to extraterritori-
ality, like Europeans in China during
the Ninteenth Century. So we have
our own transport, for which he
must furnish petrol, and our own
armed guard, and we fly our own
flag over Team Center, and that
gripes him as much as anything
else. That and the fact that we’re
foreigners. So wouldn’t he love to
make this espionage rap stick on us !”

“And our contract specifically
gives the United States the right to
take action against us in case we
endanger the national security,’’
Karen added. She stuffed her ciga-
rette into the not-too-recently-emp-
tied receiver beside her chair, her
blue eyes troubled. “You know,
some of us could get shot over this,
if we’re not careful. Dune, does it
really have to be one of our own peo-
ple who—?”

“I don’t see how it could be any-
body else,” MacLeod said. “I don’t
like the idea any more than you do,
but there it is.”

“Well, what are we going to do?
Is there nobody whom we can
, trust ?”

“Among the technicians and
guards, yes. I could think of a score
who are absolutely loyal. But among
the Team itself— the top researchers

—there’s nobody I'd take a chance on
but Kato Sugihara.”

“Can you even be sure of him? I’d
hate to think of him as a traitor,
but-”

“I have a couple of reasons for
eliminating Kato,” MacLeod said.
“In the first place, outside nucleonic
and binding-force physics, there are
only three things he’s interested in.
Jitterbugging, hand-painted neckties,
and Southern-style cooking. If he
went over to the Komintern, he
wouldn’t be able to get any of those.
Then, he only spends about half his
share of the Team’s profits, and turns
the rest back into the Team Fund.
He has a credit of about a hundred
thousand dollars, which he’d lose by
leaving us. And then, there’s an-
other thing. Kato’s father was killed
on Guadalcanal, in 1942, when he
was only five. After that he was
brought up in the teachings of
Bushido by his grandfather, an old-
time samurai. Bushido is open to
some criticism, but nobody can show
where double-crossing your own
gang is good Bushido. And today,
Japan is allied with the Western
Union, and in any case, he wouldn’t
help the Komintern. The Japs’ll for-
give Russia for that Mussolini back-
stab in 1945 after the Irish start
building monuments to Cromwell.”

A light-blue jeep, lettered Mac-
Leod Research Team in cherry-red,
was approaching across the wide
concrete apron. MacLeod grinned.

“Here it comes. Fasten your
safety belt when you get in; that’s
Ahmed driving.”

60

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Karen looked at her watch. “And
it’s almost time for dinner. You
know, I dread the thought of sitting
at the table with the others, and
wondering which of them is betray-
ing us.”

“Only nine of us, instead of
thirteen, and still one is a Judas,”
MacLeod said. “I suppose there’s
always a place for Judas, at any
table.”

The MacLeod Team dined to-
gether, apart from their assistants
and technicians and students. This
was no snobbish attempt at class-
distinction ; matters of Team policy
were often discussed at the trig round
table, and the more confidential de-
tails of their work. People who have
only their knowledge and their ideas
to sell are wary about bandying
either loosely, and the six men and
three women who faced each other
across the twelve-foot diameter of
the teakwood table had no other
stock-in-trade.

They were nine people of nine
different nationalities, or they were
nine people of the common extra-
nationality of science. That Duncan
MacLeod, their leader, had grown
up in the Transvaal and his wife had
been born in the Swedish university
town of Upsala was typical not only
of their own group but of the hun-
dreds of independent research-teams
that had sprung up after the Second
World War. The scientist-adven-
turer may have been born of the re-
lentless struggle for scientific arma-
ment supremacy among nations and

the competition for improved tech-
niques among industrial corporations
during the late 19S0s and early ’60s,
but he had been begotten when two
masses of uranium came together at
the top of a steel tower in New
Mexico in 1945. And, because sci-
entific research is pre-eminently a
matter of pooling brains and efforts,
the independent scientists had banded
together into teams whose leaders
acquired power greater than that of
any condottiere captain of Renais-
sance Italy.

Duncan MacLeod, sitting out-
wardly relaxed and merry and se-
cretly watchful and bitterly sad, was
such a free-captain of science. One
by one, the others had rallied around
him, not because he was a greater
physicist than they, but because he
was a bolder, more clever, less
scrupulous adventurer, better able to
guide them through the maze of in-
ternational power-politics and the no
less ruthless if less nakedly violent
world of Big Industry.

There was his wife, Karen Hil-
quist, the young metallurgist who,
before she was twenty-five, had per-
fected a new hardening process for
SIvF and an incredibly tough gun-
steel for the Bofors works. In the
few minutes since they had returned
to Team Center, she had managed to
change her coveralls for a skirt and
blouse, and do something intriguing
with her hair.

And there was Kato Sugihara,
looking younger than his twenty-
eight years, who had begun to dem-
onstrate the existence of whole

THE MERCENARIES'

61

orders of structure below the level
of nuclear particles.

There was Suzanne Maillard, her
gray hair upswept from a face that
had never been beautiful but which
was alive with something rarer than
mere beauty ; she possessed, at the
brink of fifty, a charm and smartness
that many women half her age might
have envied, and she knew more
about cosmic rays than any other
person living.

And Adam Lowiewski, his black
mustache contrasting so oddly with
his silver hair, frantically scribbling
equations on his doodling-pad, as
though his racing fingers could never
keep pace with his brain, and ex-
plaining them, with obvious conde-
scension, to the boyish-looking Japa-
nese beside him. He was one of the
greatest of living mathematicians by
anybody’s reckoning— the greatest,
by his own.

And Sir Neville Lawton, the elec-
tronics expert, with thinning red-
gray hair and meticulously-clipped
mustache, who always gave the im-
pression of being in evening clothes,
even when, as now, he was dressed
in faded khaki.

And Heym ben-Hillel, the Israeli
quantum and wave-mechanics man,
his heaping dinner plate an affront to
the Laws of Moses, his white hair a
fluffy, tangled chaos, laughing at an
impassively-delivered joke the Eng-
lish knight had made.

And Rudolf von Heldenfeld, with
a thin-lipped killer’s mouth and a
frozen face that never betrayed its
owner’s thoughts— he was the spe-

62

cialist in magnetic currents and elec-
tromagnetic fields.

And Farida Khouroglu, the Turk-
ish girl whom MacLeod and Karen
had found begging in the streets of
Istanbul, ten years ago, and who
had grown tip following the for-
tunes of the MacLeod Team on
every continent and in a score of na-
tions. It was doubtful if she had
ever had a day’s formal schooling in
her life, but now she was secretary of
the Team, with a grasp of physics
that would have shamed many a pro-
fessor. She had grown up a beauty,
too, with the large dark eyes and jet-
black hair and paper-white skin of
her race. She and Kato Sugihara
were very much in love.

A good team ; the best physics-
research team in a power-mad,
knowledge-hungry world. MacLeod
thought, toying with the stem of his
wineglass, of some of their triumphs :
The West Australia Atomic Power
Plant. The Segovia Plutonium
W orks, which had got them all titled
as Grandees of the restored Spanish
Monarchy. The sea-water chemical
extraction plant in Puerto Rico,
where they had worked for Associ-
ated Enterprises, whose president,
Blake Hartley, had later become
President of the United States. The
hard-won victory over a seemingly
insoluble problem in the Belgian
Congo uranium mines— He thought,
too, of the dangers they had faced to-
gether, in a world where soldiers
must use the weapons of science and
scientists must learn the arts of vio-
lence. Of the treachery of the Is-

ASTO UNDING S C I E N CE- F I CTIO N

lamic Kaliphate, for whom they had
once worked ; of the intrigues and
plots which had surrounded them in
Spain ; of the many attempted kid-
napings and assassinations^ of the
time in Basra when they had fought
with pistols and tommy guns and
snatched-up clubs and flasks of acid
to defend their laboratories.

A good team— before the rot of
treason had touched it. He could
almost smell the putrid stench of it,
and yet, as he glanced from face to
face, he could not guess the traitor.
And he had so little time—

Kate Sugihara’s voice rose to
dominate the murmur of conversa-
tion around the table.

“I think I am getting somewhere on
my photon-neutrino-electron inter-
change-cycle,” he announced. “And
I think it can he correlated to the
collapsed-matter research.”

“So?” von Heldenfeld looked up
in interest. “And not with the prob-
lem of what goes on in the ‘hot layer’
surrounding the Earth?”

“No, Suzanne talked me out of
that idea,” the Japanese replied.
“That’s just a secondary effect of
the effect of cosmic rays and solar
radiations on the order of particles
existing at that level. But I think
that. I have the key to the problem
of collapsing matter to plate the hull
of the spaceship.”

“That’s interesting,” Sir Neville
Lawton commented. “How so ?”
“Well, you know what happens
when a photon comes in contact
with the atomic structure of matter,”

Kato said. “There may be an elastic
collision, in which the photon mere-
ly bounces off. Macroscopically,
that’s the effect we cal! reflection of
light. Or there may be an inelastic
collision, when the photon hits an
atom and knocks out an electron— the
old photoelectric ^jfect, Or, the
photon may be retained for a while
and emitted again relatively un-
changed— the effect observed in lumi-
nous paint. Or, the photon may
penetrate, undergo a change to a
neutrino, and either remain in the
nucleus of the atom or pass through
it, depending upon a number of fac-
tors. All this, of course, is old stuff ;
even the photon-neutrino inter-
change has been known since the
mid-’50s, when the Gamow neutrino-
counter was developed. But now we
come to what you have been so good
as to christen the Sugihara Effect—
the neutrino picking up a negative
charge and, in effect, turning into an
electron, and then losing its charge,
turning back into a neutrino, and
then, as in the case of metal heated
to incandescence, being emitted
again as a photon.

'“At first, we thought this had no
connection with the spaceship in-
sulation problem we are under con-
tract to work out, and we agreed to
keep this effect a Team secret until
we could find out if it had commer-
cial possibilities. But now, I find
that it has a direct connection with
the collapsed-matter problem. When
the electron loses its negative charge
and reverts to a neutrino, there is a
definite accretion of interatomic bind-

THE MERCENARIES

63

ing-force, and the molecule, or the
crystalline lattice or whatever tends
to contract, and when the neutrino
becomes a photon, the nucleus of the
atom contracts.”

Ilcyin ben-Hillel was sitting ob-
livious to everything but his young
colleague’s words, a slice of the flesh
of the unclean beast impaled on his
fork and halfway to his mouth.

‘‘Yes! Certainly!” lie exclaimed.
“That would explain so many things
I have wondered about. And of
course, there are other forces at
work which, in the course of nature,
balance that effect—”

"But can the process be con-
trolled ?” Suzanne Maillard wanted
to know. “Can you convert electrons
to neutrinos and then to photons in
sufficient numbers, and eliminate
other effects that would cause com-
pensating atomic and molecular
expansion ?”

Kato grinned, like a tomcat con-;
templating the bones of a fish he has
just eaten.

"Yes, 1 can. I have.” He turned
to MacLeod. “Remember those bul-
lets I got from you?” he asked.

MacLeod nodded. He hand-
loaded for his .38 special, and like
all advanced cases of handloading-
fever, he was religiously fanatical
about uniformity of bullet weights
and dimensions. Unlike most hand-
loaders, he had available the instru-
ments to secure such uniformity.

“Those bullets are as nearly alike
as different objects can be,” Kato
said. “They weigh 158 grains, and

64

that means one-five-eight-point-zero-
zero-zero-practically-nothing. The di-
ameter is .35903 inches. All right ;
I've been subjecting those bullets to
different radiation - bombardments,
and the best results have given me
a bullet with a diameter of .35892
inches, and the weight is unchanged.
In other words, there’s been no loss
of mass, but the mass had contracted.
And that’s only been the first test,”.

“Well, write up everything you
have on it, and we’ll lay out further
experimental work,” MacLeod said.
He glanced around the table. “So
far, we can’t lie entirely sure. The
shrinkage may lie all in the crystal-
line lattice ; the atomic structure may
be unchanged. What we need is
matter that is really collapsed.”

“I’ll do that,” Kato said. “Farida,
I’ll have all my data available for
you before noon tomorrow ; you can
make up copies for all Team mem-
bers.”

“Make mine on microfilm, for pro-
jection,” von Heldenfeld said.

“Mine, too,” Sir Neville Lawton
added.

“Better make microfilm copies for
everybody,” Heym ben-Hillel sug-
gested. “They’re handier than type-
script.”

MacLeod rose silently and tiptoed
around behind his wife and Rudolf
von Heldenfeld, to touch Kato Sugi-
hara on the shoulder.

“Come on outside, Kato,” he
whispered. “I want to talk to you.”

The Japanese nodded and rose,
following him outside onto the roof

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

above the laboratories. They walked
over to the edge and stopped at the
balustrade.

“Kato, when you write up your
Stuff, I want you to falsify everything
you can. Put it in such form that
the data will be absolutely worthless,
but also in such form that nobody,
not even Team members, will know
it has been falsified. Can you do
that?”

Kato’s almond-shaped eyes wid-
ened. “Of course I can, Dune,” he
replied. “But why—?”

“I hate to say this, but we have a
traitor in the Team. One of those
people back in fhe dining room is
selling us out to the Fourth Komin-
tern. I know it’s not Karen, and I
know it’s not you, and that’s as
much as I do know, now.”

The Japanese sucked in his breath
in a sharp hiss. “You wouldn’t say
that unless you were sure, Dune,” he
said.

“No. At about 1000 this morn-
ing, Dr. Weissberg, the civilian di-
rector, called me to his office. I
found him very much upset. He told
me that General Nayland is accusing
us— by which he meant this Team— of
furnishing secret information on'our
subproject to Komintern agents. He
said that British Intelligence agents
at Smolensk had learned that the
Red Triumph laboratories there were
working along lines of research origi-
nated at MacLeod Team Center here.
They relayed the information to
Western Union Central Intelligence,
and WU passed it on to United
States Central Intelligence, and now

Counter Espionage is riding Nayland
about it, and he’s trying to make us
the goat.”

“He would love to get some of us
shot,” Kato said. “And that could
happen. They took a long time get-
ting tough about espionage in this
country, but when Americans get
tough about something, they get
tough right. But look here ; we
handed in our progress-reports to
Felix Weissberg, and he passed them
on to Nayland. Couldn’t the leak be
right in Nayland’s own HQ?”

“That’s what I thought, at first,”
MacLeod replied. “Just wish-
thinking, though. Fact is, I went up
to Nayland’s HQ and had it out with
him; accused him of just that. I
think I threw enough of a scare into
him to hold him for a couple of days.
I wanted to know just what it was
the Komintern was supposed to have
got from us, but he wouldn’t tell me.
That, of course, was classified-stuff.”

“Well?”

“Well then, Karen and I got our
digestive tracts emptied and went in
to town, where I could use a phone
that didn’t go through a military
switchboard, and I put through a call
to Allan Hartley, President Hart-
ley’s son. He owes us a break, after
the work we did in Puerto Rico. I
told him all I wanted was some in-
formation to help clear ourselves, and
he told me to wait a half an hour and
then call Counter Espionage Office
in Washington and talk to General
Hammond.”

“Ha! If Allan Hartley’s for us,
what are we worried about?” Kato

THE MERCENARIES

65

asked. “[ always knew he was the
power back of Associated Enter-
prises and his father was the front-
man ; I’ll bet it’s the same with the
Government.”

’‘Allan Hartley’s for us as long as
our nose is clean. If we iet.it get
din v, we get it bloodied, too. We
have to clean it ourselves,” Mac-
Leod told him. ‘‘But here’s what
Hammond gave me : The Komintern
knows all about our collapsed -matter
experiments with zinc, titanium and
nickel. They know about onr theo-
retical work on cosmic rays, includ-
ing Suzanne’s work tip to about a
month ago. They know about that
effect Sir Neville and Heym discov-
ered two months ago.” He paused.
“And they know about the photon-
neutrino-electron interchange.”

Kato responded to ibis with a
gruesome double-take that gave his
face the fleeting, appearance of an
ancient samurai war mask.

‘‘That wasn’t included in any re-
port we ever made,” he said. ‘‘You’re
right ; the leak comes from inside the
Team. It must he Sir Neville, or
Suzanne, or Heym ben-IIillel, or
Adam Lowiewski, or Rudolf von
Heldenfeld, or— No! No, I can’t
believe it could he Farida!” He
looked at MacLeod pleadingly. ‘‘You
don’t think she could have—?”

“No, Kato. The Team’s her
whole life, even more than it is mine.
She came with us when she was only
twelve, and grew up with us, She
doesn’t know any other life than this,
and wouldn’t want any other. It has
to he one of the other five.”

“Well, there’s Suzanne,” Kato be-
gan. “She had to clear out of France
because of political activities, after
the collapse of the Fourth Republic
and the establishment of the Fight i-
Directoire in ’57. And she worked
with Joliot-Curie, and she was at the
University of Louvain in the early
’50s, when that place was crawling
with Commies.”

“And that brings us to Sir
Neville,” MacLeod added. “He
dabbles in spiritualism; he and
Suzanne do planchette-seances. A
planchette can he manipulated.
Maybe Suzanne produced a com-
munication advising Sir Neville to
help the Komintern,”

“Could he. Then, how about
Lowiewski ? He’s a Pole who can’t
go hack to Poland, and Poland’s a
Komintern country,” Kato pointed
out. “Maybe he’d sell us' out for
amnesty, though why he’d want to
go hack there, the way things are
now-?”

“His vanity. You know, mission-
ary-school native going hack to the
village wearing real pants, to show
off to the savages. Used to be a-
standing joke, down where I came
from.” MacLeod thought for a mo-
ment. “And Rudolf ; he’s always
had a poor view of the democratic
system of government. He might
feel more at home with the Komin-
tern. Of course, the Ruskis killed
his parents in 1945—”

“So what?” Kato retorted. “The
Americans killed my father in 1942,
but I’m not making an issue out of
it. That was another war ; Japan’s a

THE MERCENARIES

ASMS

67

Western Union country, now. So’s
Germany— How about Heym, by
the way ? Remember when the Kom-
intern wanted us to come to Russia
and do the same work we’re doing
here ?”

“I remember that after we
turned them down, somebody tried
to kidnap Karen,” MacLeod said
grimly. “I remember a couple of
Russians got rather suddenly dead
trying it, too.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that. I was
thinking of our round-table argu-
ment when the proposition was con-
sidered. Heym was in favor of ac-
cepting. Now that, I would say,
indicates either Communist sympa-
thies or an overtrusting nature,”
Kato submitted. “And a lot of
grade- A traitors have been made out
of people with trusting natures.”

MacLeod got out his pipe and lit
it. For a long time, he stared out
across the mountain-ringed vista of
sagebrush, dotted *»at wide intervals
with the bulks of research-centers
and the red roofs of the villages.

“Kato, I think I know how we’re
going to find out which one it is,” he
•aid. “First of all, you write up
your data, and falsify it so that it
won’t do any damage if it gets into
Komintern hands. And then—”

The next day started in an atmos-
phere of suppressed excitement and
anxiety which, beginning with Mac-
Leod and Karen and Kato Sugihara,
seemed to communicate itself by con-
tagion to everybody in the Mac-
Leod Team’s laboratories. The top

68

researchers and their immediate as-
sistants and students were the first
to catch it ; they ascribed the ten-
sion under which their leader and his
wife and the Japanese labored to the
recent developments in the collapsed-
matter problem. Then, there were
about a dozen implicitly-trusted tech-
nicians and guards, who had been
Secretly gathered in MacLeod’s of-
fice the night before and informed
of the crisis that had arisen. Their
associates could not miss the fact
that they were preoccupied with
something unusual.

They were a variegated crew ; men
who had been added to the Team in
every corner of the world. There
was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman, the
Arab jeep-driver who had joined
them in Basra. There was the wiry
little Greek whom everybody called
Alex Unpronounceable. There was
an Italian, and two Chinese, and a
cashiered French Air Force officer,
and a Malay, and the son of an Eng-
lish earl who insisted that his name
was Bertie Wooster. They had
sworn themselves to secrecy, had
heard MacLeod’s story with a poly-
lingual burst of pious or blasphemous
exclamations, and then they had scat-
tered, each to the work assigned him.

MacLeod had risen early and sub-
mitted to the ordeal of the search to
leave the reservation and go to town
again, this time for a conference at
the shabby back-street cigar store
that concealed a Counter Espionage
center. He had returned just as
Farida Khouroglu was finishing the
microfilm copies of Kato’s ingeni-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ouslv -concocted pseudo-data. These
copies were distributed at noon,
while the Team was lunching, along
with carbons of the original type-
script.

He was the first to leave the table,
going directly to the basement, where
Alex Unpronounceable and the man
who had got his alias from the works
of P. G. Wodehouse were listening
in on the telephone calls going in and
out through the Team-center switch-
board, and making recordings. For
two hours, MacLeod remained with
them. He heard Suzanne Maillard and
■some woman who was talking from
a number in the Army married-
officers’ settlement making arrange-
ments about a party. He heard Ru-
dolf von Heldenfeld make a date
with some girl. He listened to a'
violent altercation between the Team
chef and somebody at Army Quar-
termaster’s HQ about the quality of
a lot of dressed chicken. He listened
to a call that came in for Adam
Lowiewski, the mathematician.

- “This is Joe,” the caller said. “Fve
got to go to town late this afternoon,
but I was wondering if you’d have
time to meet me at the Recreation
House at Oppenheimer Village for a
game of chess. I’m calling from
there, now.”

“Fine ; I can make it,” Lowiewski’s
voice replied. “I’m in the middle of
a devil’s own mathematical problem ;
maybe a game of chess would clear
my head. I have a new queen’s-
knight gambit I want to try on you,
anyhow.”

Bertie W ooster looked up sharply.

“Now there; that may he what
we’re—”

The telephone beside MacLeod
rang. He scooped it up ; named him-
self into it.

It was Ahmed Abd-el-Rahman.
“Look, chief ; I tail this guy to Op-
penheimer Village,” the Arab, who
had learned English from American
movies, answered. “He goes into
the rec-joint. I slide in after him,
an’ he ain’t in sight. I’m lookin’
around for him, see, when he comes
bargin’ outa the Don Ameche box.
Then he grabs a table an’ a beer.
What next,?”

“Stay there ; keep an eye on him,”
MacLeod told him. “If I want you,
I’ll call.”

MacLeod hung up and straight-
ened, feeling under his packet for his
.38-special.

“That’s it, hoys,” he said. “Lo-
wiewski. Come on.”

“Hah!” Alex Unpronounceable
had his gun out and was checking
the cylinder. He spoke briefly in
description of the Polish mathema-
tician’s ancestry, physical character-
istics, and probable post-mortem des-
tination. Then he put the gun away,
and the three men left the basement.

. For minutes that seemed like
hours, MacLeod and the Greek
waited on the main floor, where they
could watch both the elevators and
the stairway. Bertie Wooster had
gone up to alert Kato Sugihara and
Karen. Then the door of one of the
elevators opened and Adam Lowiew-
ski emerged, with Kato behind him,

THE MERCENARIES

69

apparently lost in a bulky scientific
journal he was reading. The Greek
moved in from one side, and Mac-
Leod stepped in front of the Pole.

“Hi, Adam,” he greeted. “Have
you looked into that hatch of data
yet ?”

“Oh, yes. Yes.” Lowiewski
seemed barely able to keep his impa-
tience within the hounds of polite-
ness. “Of course, it’s out of my
line, hut the mathematics seems
sound.” He started to move away.

"You’re not going anywhere,”
MacLeod told him. “The chess
game is over. The red pawns are
taken— the one at Oppenheimer Vil-
lage, and the one here.”

There was a split second in which
I .owiewski struggled— almost success-
fully— to erase the consternation from
his face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” he began. His right hand
started to slide under his left coat
lapel.

MacLeod’s Colt was covering him
before he could complete the move-
ment. At the same time, Kato Sugi-
hara dropped the paper-hound peri-
odical, revealing the thin-bladed
knife he had concealed under it. Pie
stepped forward, pressing the point
of the weapon against the Pole’-s
side. With the other hand, he reached
across Lowiewski’s chesf and jerked
the pistol from his shoulder-holster.
Tt was one of the elegant little 132
Beretta 1954 Model automatics.

“Into the elevator,” MacLeod or-
dered. An increasing pressure of
Kato’s knife emphasized the order.

70

“And watch him ; don’t let him get
rid of anything,” he added to the
Greek.

“If you would explain this out-
rage—” Lowiewski began. “I assume
it is your idea of a joke—”

Without even replying, MacLeod
slammed the doors and started the
elevator upward, letting it rise six
floors to the living quarters. Karen
Hilquist and the aristocratic black-
sheep who called himself Bertie
Wooster were waiting when he
opened the door. The Englishman
took one of Lowiewski’s arms ; Mac-
Leod took the other. The rest fell
in behind as they hustled the captive
down the hall and into the big sound-
proofed dining room. They kept
Lowiewski standing, well away from
any movable object in the room ;
Alex Unpronounceable took his left
arm as MacLeod released it and went
to the communicator and punched
the all-outlets button.

“Dr. Maillard ; Dr. Sir Neville
Lawton; Dr. ben-Hillel; Dr. von
Heldenfeld ; Mile. Khouroglu,” he
called. “Dr. MacLeod speaking.
Come at once, repeat at once, to
the round table— Dr. Maillard ; Dr,
Sir Neville Lawton—”

Karen said something to the Japa-
nese and went outside. For a while,
nobody spoke. Kato came over and
lit a cigarette in the howl of Mac-
Leod’s pipe. Then the other Team
members entered in a body. Evi-
dently Karen had intercepted them
in the hallway and warned them that
they would find some unusual situa-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

tion inside ; even so, there was a
burst of surprised exclamations when
they found Adam Lowiewski under
detention.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mac-
Leod said, “I regret to tell you that
I have placed our colleague, Dr.
Lowiewski, under arrest. He is sus-
pected of betraying confidential data
to agents of the Fourth Komintern.
Yesterday, I learned that data on all
our work here, including Team-
secret data on the Sugihara Effect,
had got into the hands of the Komin-
tern and was being used in research
at the Smolensk laboratories. I also
learned that General Nayland blames
this Team as a whole with double-
dealing and selling this data to the
Komintern. T don’t need to go into
any lengthy exposition of General
Nayland’s attitude toward. this Team,
or toward Free Scientists as a class,
or toward the research-contract sys-
tem. Nor do f need to point out that
if he pressed these charges against
us, some of us could easily suffer
death or imprisonment.”

“So he had to have a victim in a
hurry, and pulled my name out of the
hat,” Lowiewski sneered.

“I appreciate the gravity of the
situation,” Sir Neville Lawton said.
“And if the Sugihara Effect was
among the data betrayed, I can un-
derstand that nobody but one of us
could have betrayed it. But why,
necessarily, should it he Adam? We
all have unlimited access to all rec-
ords and theoretical data.”

“Exactly. But collecting informa-
tion is the smallest and easiest part

of espionage. Almost anybody can
collect information. Where the spy
really earns his pay is in transmitting
information. Now, think of the al-
most fantastic secuirty measures in
force here, and consider how you
would get such information, includ-
ing masses of mathematical data be-
yond any human power of memoriza-
tion, out of this reservation.”

“Ha, nobody can take anything
out,” Suzanne Maillard said. “Not
even one’s breakfast. Is Adam ac-
cused of sorcery, too?”

“The only material things that are
allowed to leave this reservation are
sealed cases of models and data
shipped to the different development
plants. And the Sugihara Effect
never was reported, and wouldn't go
out that way,” Heym ben-I Tillel ob-
jected.

“But the data on the Sugihara Ef-
fect reached Smolensk,” MacLeod
replied. “And don’t talk about par-
win and Wallace ; it wasn’t a coinci-
dence. This stuff was taken out of
the Tonto Basin Reservation by the
only person who could have done so,
in the only way that anything could
leave the reservation without search.
So I had that person shadowed, and
at the same time I had our telephone
lines tapped, and eavesdropped on all
calls entering or leaving this center.
And the person who had to be the
spy-courier called Adam Lowiewski,
and Lowiewski made an appoint-
ment to meet him at the Oppen-
heitner Village Recreation House to
play chess.”

“Very suspicious, very suspicious,”

THE MERCENARIES

71

Lowiewski derided. “I receive a call
from a friend at the same time that
some anonymous suspect is using
the phone. There are only five hun-
dred telephone conversations a min-
ute on this reservation.”

“Immediately, Dr. Lowiewski at-
tempted to leave this building,” Mac-
Leod went on. “When I intercepted
him, he tried to draw a pistol. This
one.” He exhibited the Beretta. “I
am now going to have Dr. Lowiewski
searched, in the presence of all of
you.” He nodded to Alex and the
Englishman.

They did their work thoroughly.
A pile of Lowiewski’s pocket effects
was made on the table ; as each item
was added to it, the Pole made some
sarcastic comment.

“And that pack of cigarettes ; un-
opened,” he jeered. “I suppose I
communicated the data to the manu-
facturers by telepathy, and they
printed it on the cigarette papers in
invisible ink.”

“Maybe not. Maybe you opened
the pack, and then resealed it,” Kato
suggested. “A heated spatula under
the cellophane ; like this.”

He used the point of his knife to
illustrate. The cellophane came un-
sealed with surprising ease : so did
the revenue stamp. He dumped out
the contents of the pack : sixteen
cigarettes, four cigarette tip-ends,
four bits snipped from the other ends
—and a small aluminum microfilm
capsule.

Lowiewski’s face twitched. For
an instant, he tried vainly to break

loose from the men who held him.
Then he slumped into a chair. Heym
ben-Hillel gasped in shocked sur-
prise. Suzanne Maillard gave a
short, felinelike cry. Sir Neville
Lawton looked at the capsule curi-
ously and said : “Well, my sainted
Aunt Agatha !”

“That’s the capsule I gave him, at
noon,” Farida Khouroglu exclaimed,
picking it up. She opened it and
pulled out a roll of colloidex pro-
jection film. There was also a bit of
cigarette paper in the capsule, upon
which a notation had been made in
Kyrilic characters.

Rudolf von Heldenfeld could read
Russian. “ ‘Data on new develop-
ment of photon-neutrino-electron in-
terchange. 22 July, ’65. Yladmir.’
Vladmir, I suppose, is this schwein -
hiind’s code name,” he added.

The film and the paper passed
from hand to hand. The other mem-
bers of the Team sat down ; there
was a tendency to move away from
the chair occupied by Adam Lowiew-
ski. He noticed this and sneered.

“Afraid of contamination from the
moral leper?” he asked. “You were
glad enough to have me correct your
stupid mathematical errors.”

Kato Sugihara picked up the cap-
sule, took a final glance at the ciga-
rette pack, and said to MacLeod :
“I’ll be back as soon as this is done.”
With that, he left the room, followed
by Bertie Wooster and the Greek.

Heym ben-Hillel turned to the
others ; his eyes had the hurt and
puzzled look of a dog that has been

72

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

kicked for no reason. “But why did
he do this?” he asked.

“He just told you,” MacLeod re-
plied. “He’s the great Adam
Lowiewski. Checking math for a
physics-research team is beneath his
dignity. I suppose the Komintern
offered him a professorship at Stalin
University.” He was watching Lo-
wiewski’s face keenly. “No,” he con-
tinued. “It was probably the mathe-
matics chair of the Soviet Academy
of Sciences.”

“But who was this person who
could smuggle microfilm out of the
reservation ?” Suzanne Maillard
wanted to know. “Somebody has
invented teleportation, then ?”

MacLeod shook his head. “It was
General Nayland’s chauffeur. It had
to be. General Nayland’s car is the
only thing that gets out of here with-
out being searched. The car itself
is serviced at Army vehicles pool ;
nobody could hide anything in it for
a confederate to pick up outside.
Nayland is a stuffed shirt of the first
stuffing, and a tinpot Hitler to boot,
but he is fanatically and incorrupt-
ibly patriotic. That ' leaves the
chauffeur. When Nayland’s in the
car, nobody even sees him ; he might
as well be a robot steering-device.
Old case of Father Brown’s Invis-
ible Man. So, since he had to be
the courier, all I did was have Ahmed
Abd-el-Rahman shadow him, and at
the same time tap our phones. When
he contacted Lowiewski, I knew
Lowiewski was our traitor.”

Sir Neville Lawton gave a stran-

gling laugh. “Oh, my dear Aunt
Fanny! And Nayland goes posi-
tively crackers on security. He gets
goose pimples every time he hears
somebody saying ‘E = me 2 ’, for fear
a Komintern spy might hear him.
It’s a wonder he hasn’t put the value
of Planck’s Constant on the classified
list. He sets up all these fantastic
search rooms and barriers, and then
he drives through the gate, honking
his bloody horn, with his chauffeur’s
pockets full of top secrets. Now I’ve
seen everything !”

“Not quite everything,” MacLeod
said. “Kato’s going to put that cap-
sule in another cigarette pack, and
he’ll send one of his lab girls to Op-

THE MERCENARIES

73

penheimcr Village with it, with a
message from Lowiewski to the ef-
fect that he couldn’t get away. And
when this chauffeur t tikes it out, he’ll
run into a Counter Espionage road-
block on the way to town. They’ll
shoot him, of course, and they’ll
probably transfer Nayland to the
Mississippi Valley Flood Control
Project, where he can’t do any more
damage. At least, we’ll have him out
of our hair.”

“If we have any hair left,” Ileym
ben-Hillel gloomed. “You’ve got
Nayland into trouble, but you haven’t
got us out of it.”

“What do you mean?” Suzanne
Maillard demanded. “He’s found

the traitor and stopped the leak.”

“Yes, but we’re still responsible, as
a team, for this betrayal,” the Israeli

pointed out. Phis Nayland is only

a symptom of the enmity which ’poli-
ticians and militarists feel toward the
Free Scientists, and of their opposi-
tion to the research-contract system.
Now they have a scandal to use. Our
part in stopping the leak will be ig-
nored ; the publicity will be about
the treason of a Free Scientist.”

“That’s right,” Sir Neville Law-
ton agreed. “And that brings up
another point. We simply can’t hand
this fellow over to the authorities.
If we do, we establish a precedent
that may wreck the whole system un-
der which we operate.”

“Yes; it would be a fine thing if
governments start putting Free Sci-
entists on trial and shooting them,”
Farida Khouroglu supported him.

“In a few years, none of us would be
safe.”

“But,” Suzanne cried, “you are
not arguing that this species of an
animal be allowed to betray us un-
punished ?”

“Look.” Rudolf von Heldenfeld
said. “Let us give him his pistol,
and one cartridge, and let him re-
move himself like a gentleman. He
will spare himself the humiliation of
trial and execution, and us all the
embarrassment of having a fellow
scientist piloried as a traitor.”

“Now there’s a typical Prussian
suggestion,” Lowiewski said.

Kato Sugihara, returning alone,
looked around the table. “Did I miss
something interesting?” he asked.

“Oh, very,” Lowiewski told him.
“Your Junker friend thinks I should
perform seppuku.”

Kato nodded quickly. “Excellent
idea!” he congratulated von Helden-
feld. If he does, he’ll save every-
body a lot of trouble. Himself in-
cluded.” He nodded again. “If he
does that, we can protect his reputa-
tion, after he’s dead.”

“I don’t really see how,” Sir Ne-
ville objected. "When the Counter
Espionage people were brought into
this, the thing went out of our
control.”

“Why, this chauffeur was the spy,
as well as the spy-courier,” MacLeod
said. “The information he trans-
mitted was picked up piecemeal from
different' indiscreet lab-workers and
students attached to our team. Of

74

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

course, we are* investigating, mum-
ble-mumble. Naturally, no one will
admit, mumble-mumble. No stone
will be left unturned, mumble-mum-
ble. Disciplinary action, mumble-
mumble.”

“And I suppose he got that micro-
film piecemeal, too?” Lowiewski
asked.

“Oh, that?” MacLeod shrugged.
“That was planted on him. One of
our girls arranged an opportunity for
him to steal it from her, after we be-
gan to suspect him. Of course, Kato
falsified everything he put into that
report. As information, it’s worth-
less.”

“Worthless? It's better than
that,” Kato grinned. “I’m really
sorry the Komintern won’t get it.
They’d trv some of that stuff out
with the big betatron at Smolensk,
and a microsecond after they’d throw
the switch, Smolensk would look
worse than Hiroshima did.”

“Well, why would our, esteemed
colleague commit suicide, just at this
time?” Karen Hilquist asked.

“Maybe plutonium poisoning,”
Farida suggested. “He was doing
something in the radiation-lab and
got some Pu in him, and of course,
shooting’s not as painful as that.
So-”

“Oh, my dear !” Suzanne pro-
tested. “That hut stinks ! The great
Adam Lowiewski, descending from
his pinnacle ©f pure mathematics, to
perform a vulgar experiment? With
actual things ?” The Frenchwoman
gave an exaggerated shudder. “Hor-
rors !”

“Besides, if our people began get-
ting radioactive, somebody would he
sure to claim we were endangering
the safety of the whole establish-
ment, and the national-security clause
would he invoked, and some nosy
person would put a geiger on the
dear departed,” Sir Neville added.

“Nervous collapse,” Karen said.
“According to the laity, all scientists
are crazy. Crazy people kill them-
selves. Adam Lowiewski was a sci-
entist. Ergo Adam Lowiewski killed
himself. Besides, a nervous collapse
isn’t instrumentallv detectable,”

Heym ben-Hillel looked at Mac-
Leod, his eyes troubled.

“But, Dune ; have we the right to
put him to death, either by his own
hand or by an Army firing squad?”
he asked. “Remember he is not
only a traitor ; he is one of the
world’s greatest mathematical minds.
Have . we a right to destroy that
mind ?”

Von Heldenfeld shouted, hanging
his fist on the table: “I don’t care
if he’s Gauss and Riemann and
Lorenz and Poincare and Minkowski
and Whitehead and Einstein, all col-
lapsed into one ! The man is a stink-
ing traitor, not only to us, hut to all
scientists and all sciences ! If he
doesn’t shoot himself, hand him over
to the United States, and let them
shoot him ! Why do we go on
arguing?”

Lowiewski was smiling, now. The
panic that had seized him in the hall-
way below, and the desperation when

THE MERCENARIES

75

the Cigarette pack had been opened,
had left him.

“Now I have a modest proposal,
which will solve your difficulties,”
he said. “I have money, papers,
clothing, everything I will need, out-
side the reservation. Suppose you
just let me leave here. Then, if
there is any trouble, you can use this
fiction about the indiscreet under-
lings, without the unnecessary em-
bellishment of my suicide—”

Rudolf von Heldenfeld let out an
inarticulate roar of fury. For an in-
stant, he was beyond words. Then
he sprang to his feet.

“Look at him !” he cried. “Look
at him, laughing in our faces, for the
dupes and fools he thinks we are!”
He thrust out his hand toward Mac-
Leod. “Give me the pistol ! He
won’t shoot himself ; I’ll do it for
him !”

“It would work, Dune. Really, it
would,” Heym ben-Hillel urged.

“No,” Karen Hilquist contra-
dicted. “If he left here, everybody
would know what had happened, and
we’d be accused of protecting him.
If he kills himself, we can get things
hushed up; dead traitors are good
traitors. But if he remains alive, we
must disassociate ourselves from him
by handing him over.”

“And wreck the prestige of the
Team?” Lowiewski asked.

“At least you will not live to see
that !” Suzanne retorted.

Heym ben-Hillel put his elbows
on the table and his head in his
hands. “Is there no solution to this?”
he almost wailed.

76

“Certainly; an obvious solution,”
MacLeod said, rising. “Rudolf has
just stated it. Only I’m leader of
this Team, and there are, of course,
jobs a team-leader simply doesn’t
delegate.” The safety catch of the
Beretta clicked a period to his words.

“No!” The word was wrenched
almost physically out of Lowiewski.
He, too, was on his feet, a sudden
desperate fear in his face. “No!
You wouldn’t murder me!”

“The term is ‘execute’,” MacLeod
corrected. Then his arm swung up,
and lie shot Adam Lowiewski
through the forehead.

For an instant, the Pole remained
on his feet. Then his knees buckled,
and he fell forward against the table,
sliding to the floor.

MacLeod went around the table,
behind Kato Sugihara and Farida
Khouroglu and Heym ben-Hillel,
and Stood looking down at the man
he had killed. He dropped the auto-
matic within a few inches of the dead
renegade’s outstretched hand, then
turned to face the others.

“I regret,” he addressed them, his
voice and face blank of expression,
“to announce that our distinguished
colleague, Dr. Adam Lowiewski, has
committed suicide by shooting, after
a nervous collapse resulting from
overwork.”

Sir Neville Lawton looked criti-
cally at the motionless figure on the
floor.

“I’m afraid we’ll have trouble
making that stick, Dune,” he said.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“You shot him at about five yards;
there isn’t a powder mark on him.”
“Oh, sorry ; I forgot.” MacLeod’s
voice was mockingly contrite. “It
i was Dr. Lowiewski’s expressed wish
that his remains be cremated as soon
after death as possible, and that fu-
neral services be held over his ashes.
The big electric furnace in the metal-
lurgical lab will do, I think.”

“But . . . but there’ll be all sorts of
formalities—” the Englishman pro-
tested.

“Now you forget. Our contract,”
MacLeod reminded him. “We stand
upon our contractual immunity ; we
certaintlv won’t allow any stupid bu-
reaucratic interference with our de-
ceased colleague’s wishes. We have
a regular M.D. on our payroll, in
case anybody has to have a death
certificate to keep him happy, but
beyond that—” He shrugged.

“It burns me up, though!”
Suzanne Maillard cried. “After the
spaceship is built, and the Moon is
annexed to the Western Union, there
will he publicity, and people will eu-
logize this species of an Tscariot !”
Heym !><•:;• I lillel, who had been
staring at MacLeod in shocked unbe-
lief, roused himself.

“Well, why not? Isn’t the cre-
ator of the Lowiewski function trans-
formations and the rules of inverse
probabilities Worthy of eulogy ?” He
turned to MacLeod. "I couldn’t
have done what you did, but mavhe
it was for the best. The traitor is

dead ; the mathematician will live
forever.”

“You miss the whole point,” Mac-
Leod said. “Both of you. It wasn’t
a question of revenge, like gangsters
bumping off a double cmsscr. And
it wasn’t a question of whitewash-
ing Lowiewski for posterity. We
are the MacLeod Research Team.
We owe no permanent allegiance to,
nor acknowledge the authority of,
any national sovereignty or any
combination of nations. We deal
with national governments as with
Equals. In consequence, we must
make and enforce our own laws.

"You must understand that we
enjoy this status only on sufferance.
The nations of the world tolerate the
Free Scientists only because they
need us, and because they know they
can trust us. Now, no responsible
government official is going to he de-
ceived for a moment by this suicide
story we’ve confected. It will be
fully understood that Lowiewski was
a traitor, and that we found him out
and put him to death. And, as a
corollary, it will he understood that
this Team, as a Team, is fully trust-
worthy, and that when any individual
Team member is found to he untrust-
worthy, he will he dealt'with prompt-
ly and without public scandal. In
other words, it will he understood,
from this time on, that the MacLeod
Team is worthy of the status it en-
joys and the responsibilities con-
comitant with it.”

THE ENI)

T Tt.iC tt K p.-cr. AH I ES

77

TO THE STARS

BY L. RON HUBBARD

Conclusion. Cor day was kidnaped,
across the years as well as the light-
years, isolated forever from every-
one he ever knew. And the reason
for it was necessity — a necessity he
knew only when his captain died!.

Illustrated by Rogers

Synopsis

Space is deep, Man is small and
Time a remorseless enemy.

In an ancient and forgotten age,
Man first discovered the barricade.
Before space travel first began he
knew the barrier was there: It was
an equation. Without that equation
—the basic equation of mass and
time— Man could not have pro-
gressed beyond barbaric fire. But

he did progress and he used fission
and his mechanicians became mighty
and his hopes large. But the terms
of his salvation were the term of his
imprisonment as well:

AS MASS APPROACHES IN-
FINITY, TIME APPROACHES
ZERO.

Two mathematicians derived the
equation first— Lor ents and Fitzger-
ald. And a theoretical philosopher.

78

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Albert Einstein, showed its applica-
tion. But if Lorenfs and Fitzgerald
and Einstein gave Man his Solar
System, they almost denied to him
the stars.

And yet despite the difficulties de-
rived by these great men— and con-
firmed first by nuclear physicists
and then by actual use— there were
still those zt ’ho accepted and then
defied the' law: a small cohort of
skips and men who, throughout the
ages, kept the routes of space alive.
The outcasts and the 'pariahs of
extra-system travel, the cursed and
shunned by Man, they coursed their
lonely zvays, far-bound but prison-
ers too, shackled fast by time.

Knowing zvcll their waiting fate,
who zvould volunteer to become a
part of that thin group, knowing
well their fate?

And yet, without his consent,
ALAN COR DAY found himself
an officer on the Hound of Heaven,
interstellar vessel, outzvard bound
across light-years and centuries. For
a vessel approaching the speed of
light in space cruised through time
as well at a vastly accelerated pace.
A z'oyage requiring a few months
ship-time might encompass cen-
turies.

Corday stumbled into the trap be-
cause of his need for a job on Mars
so that he could rehabilitate his for-
tunes and marry his fiance.

CAPTAIN JOCELYN , strange
master of the Hound, has taken
Alan Corday forcibly in viezv of
the Hound’s need for an educated
officer.

On the first run Corday makes,
he is in partial ignorance of the op-
eration of the velocity-mass-time
effect and can only hope. He re-
turns to Earth after what he con-
siders a short absence.

X.

The cabbie skimmed along, driv-
ing with one hand, right arm over
the hack of his seat and His face,
most of the time sideways to his
passenger, animated with interest.

“Say, bub, ain’t that a Martian
ship or something? Never seen her
like.”

Alan loved the world just now.
“That’s the Hound of Heaven.”

“Never heard of her and I know
most of the regular runs.”

“She’s back from the long pas-
sage.”

The cabbie gave a start, looked
back through his rear window and
then put on a little more speed.
“Why doesn’t somebody tell a feller
these things? I was right there
when she landed expectin’ a good,
all-night cruise around the fireworks
dispensaries with a thirsty convoy.
Whew! Glad you tipped me, bub.
Them babies are man-hungry.” He
suddenly turned back to Alan.
“Meanin’ no offense, you under-
stand. I didn’t mean—”

“I’m through with her,” said
Alan happily. “And I know what
you mean.”

The cabbie was relieved. “Well,
then! Don’t get ’em in very often.
Been two-three months since one of

TO THE STARS

79

them buzzards was around. And
the cops stood ten deep tryin’ to
keep her from leavin’. But no use.
Wonder why somebody don’t keep
a docket on ’em so’s they’d control
themselves. But heck, a police de-
partment can’t hardly stay in power
long enough to catch the same ship
again. Read the other day where
somebody was arguin’ that they was
a necessary evil, bringin’ in occa-
sional wealth and providin’ the
dockyards with work at fancy
prices. But me, I can’t see it. Now
a nice, quiet clambake with a Mar-
tian run crew— You ain’t told me
what guzzle emporium we make
first, bub. You been gone .long?”

“Not very,” said Alan with con-
fidence. “And I’m not heading for
a fast night.”

“Well, you can have one, let me
tell you, so don’t make up your
mind too fast. Ever since we got
the church out of power, old New
Chi has been runnin’ wide-open and
full-soused.”

Alan nodded, preoccupied with
his expectations, twenty-four thou-
sand sweet in his pocket. And then
the cabbie’s remark failed to mesh
properly with his thoughts. “I beg
pardon ?”

“Wide open !” said the cabbie.
“There’s Barracoon Bob’s, for in-
stance, where you get a glass of
filleroo, an armful of—”

“I mean this church thing,” said
Alan, still determined not to take
anv news seriously.

“Well?”

“I mean you said since the

80

church was knocked out of power.

I didn’t know there was a church
in power.”

The cabbie looked- back confused-
ly. “Look, bub. You sure you
ain’t had two or six already to-
night?” And then he gave a shrug.
“Forgot you was off that thing back
there.” N

“What happened?”

“Oh, the whites fixed up a church
to keep down the ‘common people’.
That was right after the last war.”
“War? What war?” said Alan,
Iris heart beginning to sag in spite
of all he could do.

“Now see here, bub, all I know is
what I learned in the eighth grade.
THE war, of course.”

“We won?”

“Bub, did anybody ever win a
war? But maybe you can say the
whites won. The Beggas Quild did
all the fightin’ and got killed off—”
“The what?”

“That’s just slang for the ‘Peo-
ple’s Party’, bub. They had a
church of their own, so I been told.
The Fission . . . no, the Electrician
. . . shucks, some church or other.
And the priests all got burned. Seen
one when I was a kid. They were
chasin’ him down an alley and his
hair was on fire. I—”

“I am very confused,” said Alan.
“What church won?”

“Oh, the white outfit wasn’t a
church, accordin’ to what I been
told. It was preached over the air
and they used jawnotics or some-
thing like that.”

“Hypnotics ?”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“Well, take your choice. But
whatever it was, the whites sure
had people stepping out for a while.
Then Conners started a revolution
and overthrew that church and
made up a new one called the Chris-
tian Church. I belong.”

Alan was trying to jigsaw all this
together on a time track.

“Anyway, you sure missed a lot
of fun. Been years since we had
any Teal trouble, but once in a while
somebody will denounce somebody
as a white and there’ll be a fine hoo-
rah and a firing party and free beer.
We got a fine man in now : Justinius
Murphy.”

“What . . . who-”

“Republicanites, of course. Say,
you are a republican, aren’t you? I
ain’t supposed to drive nobody un-
less he is.” The driver swiveled
around and looked hard. Suddenly
he yanked the controls and braked.
Then he turned and opened the
door.

“Bub, I’m sorry. But I’m not
takiri’ any chances. This is a free
country and everybody does what
he likes and all that but I got to
report it.”

“See here,” said Alan stiffly. “I
have been gone for ten or fifteen
years, true enough, but it has been
a long time since a cabbie told me
to get out.”

“You’re in the limits. And you
can hoof it, bub.”

Alan wondered whether he should
Strike the man or bribe him. He
tried the latter and it failed.

“Nope. Sorry, bub. Can’t take
chances.”

He was not used to brawling with
menials and he stepped with dignity
to the walk. He had some odds and
ends of change as part of his pay
and he extended a coin. The driver
looked at it with contempt and he
changed it to one four times the size
which the driver accepted. It was
the first time Alan noticed that he
was carrying iron money with a
glowing center. The bills he had
barely noticed beyond their odd
printing.

“Seein’ you’re playin’ the grand
duke,” said the cabbie, “I’ll com-
ment that you better shuck that
coat.”

“Why?”

“It’s white! Ain’t that enough?
Well, no hard feelings, bub, I . . .
Judas Iscariot!” And he staggered
back, pale.

Alan glanced wonderingly at his
own chest. “What now?” he said,
half angry.

“Look, bub. Suicide is all right
in its place, but that place ain’t in
my vicinity. Don’t walk ten feet
without tearin’ off that collar tab!”

“Why?”

“Why? Heavenly angels. The
engineers, tenth class ! I seen it in
my history books, eagle, compass
and all ! Who do -you suppose took
over the world?”

Alan felt a sudden surge of sick-
ness. Not from danger at hand.
Not, from any realization that his
one-time comrades had once been
kings— but that time had passed.

TO THE STARS

81

“History books,” ne repeated

dully.

But the hack was gone.

An hour later, fighting still a
dread prescience, striving to ignore
the unfamiliar buildings which
stood beside familiarly named
streets, Alan come to a small park.
It was a square on the second level,
open all the way to sunlight in the
day and stars in the night. It had
not changed. The benches and the
street lamps were all the same and
on one of those benches— He
searched quickly and from what had
threatened to engulf him he gave
out a short, happy laugh.

Carved with a junior school
scrawl and hardly obscured at all
by paint was a heart, an arrow and
two sets of initials : “A.C. Ivs CM.”.
A silly thing, something to laugh
about. They’d been young and it
had been A second date and the
moon had shone down through the
holes in the upper squares.

“Silly kids,” said Alan. He
braced the initials. “Cerita Mont-
graine”. Chica. Well, she was
here some place in the city. He
knew he would find her. Maybe
she was a little older than he now.
Maybe she was even gray, huh ?
But it had been his fault and she had
promised and everything was going
to be all right. He’d known a fel-
low, Jordan Cash in school, who
had married a woman forty years
old and they’d been happy as a
couple of pigeons. What was age?
What was age? The heart counted.

82

And it- took an older woman to
properly understand a man. Who
had said that? Oh, yes, Queen.
Fat, globulous Queen. She was
right, too.

“Sure she was right, sure she was
right,” said bis feet in cadence as he
walked down the boulevard. “Sure
she was right.” And he fought
away the gloom. But there was
something else in his bootbeats on
the pavement, something he couldn’t
completely forget. A glib, precise
thing: “Mass times Velocity,” sure,
the Einstein equation, “equals Mass
zero divided by the square root of
one minus Velocity squared divided
by Constant squared inclosed.”
Bootbeats.

He was -looking for his parents’
house, his own home. His mother
would be pretty old now, he knew
that. And bis father was probably
dead for the old fellow had been ail-
ing ever since he had lost the firm
and had had to give up the country
place and his horses. But his mother
at least would he living since she
came from a long-lived clan and had
never been ill a day in all her en-
thusiastic life. He fell guilty not
to have worried about her in the
last many weeks. But she’d under-
stand about a young man being in
love. And she’d know where Chica
was.

And then he stopped, puzzled. He
went back and looked from the cor-
ner and then came on again. There
was something strange about this
block and yet it was most certainly
the right block. There should be a

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION’

garden wall— And then he sighed
in deep relief. There was a garden
well. And he shoved at the gate
and the gate gave and he stepped
inside.

“Hey, what’s the matter with
you ?”

It was a strange man, a man in a
dirty shirt shoving potted plants
into a box.- The place was a strange
sort of hothouse without any glass
or lights or vats for liquid food.

“I don’t gell retail and I don’t
pay anybody but Jimson. So get
out.”

“I beg pardon,” said Alan. “I
was looking for the Corday resi-
dence.”

“The what?”

“The Sir Alton Corday resi-
dence.”

“Brother, this here is a paper box
factory and I rent the yard. There
ain’t a residence on this whole
square of town. I . . .. what did you
say?”

“The Sir Alton-”

“I caught it. You a government
man ? Because if you are, there
ain’t any white cash buried in this
place. I dug it all up when I
heard about it from my old man.
Not a republican ! Heard there was
some white plate found over on Lib- ^
erty Street last year, though.”

Alan looked accusingly at the gar-
den as though it had betrayed him.
Here he had braved his first rock-
ing horse and got his first licking
for pulling up the zinnias. He came
back to the presence of the man.
“Would ... do you suppose any-

body could tell me where the Cor-
days moved to?”

“Moved ?” the man laughed and
went back to stuffing plants in the
boxes with expert economy of mo-
tion. Then he saw that Alan was
still there and temporized. “You
might ask next level down. The
deacon that took over is an old bird
and he knows the whole parish like
a litany.”

“I know the place well, thank
you.”

Alan braced up, thanked him and
walked out. The gate clicked shut
behind him, a small, remorseless and
final click.

He felt a little dazed. Decelera-
tion, he told himself. Being three
or four gravities heavy for days
made a man feel funny for a while.

The church was badly battered,
shyly retired into a recess between
two larger buildings. Alan noticed,
when he saw its disrepair that the
whole neighborhood was out at el-
bows, that the streets were rutted
and cratered with mud oozing
through broken pavement. This
had been a large church once but it
had lost both wings and its steeple.
Odd to see it this way when he re-
membered it from such a short while
ago as being a noble, imposing edi-
fice with a broad lawn and skyholes
through every level all the way up.
Must have been set afire recently.

It was early and his knock at the
small door was quickly answered. A
wizened being in a black cloak an-
swered and bobbed his head at every

TO THE STARS

AST— 4S

83

word Alan spoke. But not to say
yes. He continued the gesture
throughout the interview and it was
to signify “No.”

“But my family crypt is here,”
said Alan.

“Family? Crypt?” Bob, bob.
“You talk like a white, young man.”

"May I see the crypts?” And he
gave over a coin.

“Of course, of course. And the
registers too, what’s left.”

But a yawning hole was in the
floor and the flagstones and the
names were mostly gone. Alan
struck light to a votive candle and
attemtped to read some of the in-
scriptions by this flickering red
glow. But although he recognized
the family names of some tenth and
eleventh class slabs, none bore
Corday.

“Mighty puzzling,” said the
deacon, “just why you’d like to
know,” bob, boh, “but you’re wel-
come to the registers— them that’s
left.” Bob, bob. And he showed
Alan a pile of moldy books.

But so badly were they burned
along the edges that few of the pages
could be read and Alan, hot wax
unnoticed on his hand which held
the votive light, found nothing.

“Let me see,” said the deacon. “I
recall a Strachay. You wouldn’t
want a Strachay?” And then, “Hey
now. Wait. The slabs they used
to repair the streets are some of ’em
right side up.”

Alan stared in disbelief.

“The slabs they filled the chuck
hole with in front.” Bob, bob.

84

“Come along.” And he shuffled out
into the darkness.

Alan had not noticed until this
moment that the first level was not
only badly lighted but not lighted at
all. And he had to resort to a taper
for which he paid a dollar.

He was scraping away mud with
his boot when he was hailed. A man
carrying a steady lantern came over
and berated the deacon for “illegal
sale of lights” and Alan’s taper went
out. He looked up to see a wolf-
eyed man in rags glaring at him.

“You want light, you pay for
light, my friend.”

Alan was almost too distracted by
his task to understand. He forced
himself to answer. And he found
himself cheerfully aided by a “dues
paid member of the light guild”.

They scratched and mucked for
half an hour with the deacon bob-
bing about, recommending other
chuck holes and then Alan stopped
suddenly. A broken slab was
marked “ay”.

He dug about it, heedless of the
muck, trying to find another piece
of it. And the light bearer heaved
up whiskey-laden grunts as he
pulled and the decon bobbed about
excitedly.

But that was all.

“Tell you what,” said the light
bearer. “I got a couple of friends
up the street in the messenger way
of business and we’ll send for a gar-
den digger. That’s if you’ve got
money, of course. And we’ll dig up
the whole blamed street.” This
prospect enthused him and he stood

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

up to give the potential scene a
glowing survey.

The deacon bob-bobbed that it
would be a fine idea.

And then Alan saw them. He
saw the mud and the ragged light
bearer and the cloaked deacon and
the street. He saw the church as it
had been and now the church as it
was.

He straightened. “Thank you,”
he said. “It won’t be necessary. If
you wish to accompany me, I will
pay your hire.” He turned with
precision and paid the deacon who
bob-bobbed thankfully. He indi-
cated the way he would go to the
light bearer.

And he turned his steps from the
broken slab marked “ay”.

XI.

After walking for a long time,
aimlessly, steadying himself, Alan
found that they had come from
under the levels and were in open
country, surrounded by dilapidated
shacks. He was confused as he re-
called no such section, even though
it was possible that during a life-
time he had not seen all of New
Chicago.

“This is Brightpark,” said the
light bearer with the fondness of
long acquaintance. “I got a place
over here. Not bad. Six by six and
I can near stretch out. Things have
been getting better for us republi-
cans right along. Less than thirty
percent of the city is out of work
and that’s progress!”

“Thirty percent,” said Alan, star-
tled despite his glum thoughts. “I
thought it was high at ten percent.
But of course you’re one of the
thirty, I suppose.”

“Me?” said the light bearer, in-
sulted. “Believe me, I’m a laborer!
Yes, sir. I’m one of the seventy.
How’d you think I’d get a permit to
light people along. I’m industry it-
self, employer. And to prove it I
am going to stop right here and earn
a guide tip. I go, I light, you fol-
low. That’s one thing. But there’s
nothing in my union rides— though
there's plenty in the guide rules, but
what they don’t know’ won’t hurt
’em— against my pointing a couple
of things out that you want to know.
Where we going?”

“I have been trying to orient my-
self,” said Alan, with considerable
more truth than he knew. “This is
Brightpark. I was trying to reach
Brightpark. But . this is not the
Brightpark I know. 1 have made
some kind of an error. Or you
have. I am looking for a place that
is mostly lawns, big houses and
stables. Surely you must know
where the racing crowd lives.”

“Employer, the only racing that’s
done around here is cockroaches.
And I can prove that by the fifty
cents I lost last Monday. And this
is the only Brightpark we got. You
might be fussier than some, but just
the same this is the Brightpark
you’re going to take because it’s all
there is.”

“Granted then that the place has
been . . . been subdivided. I see

TO THE STARS

85

here to the right and left a few old
homes sticking up through this rub-
bish. I am looking, specifically, for
the Montgraine residence. Their
country residence, that is, if you
don’t mind the old conceit of call-
ing this country under the shadow
of the levels. The home was called
Sunnylawn.”

“Sounds like a cemetery,” said
the light bearer. “Well, if you don’t
mind payin’ a little extra for the
guidin’, what was the exact and pre-
cise address?”

“No address. Just Sunnylawn.
The Montgraine residence. Every-
body-”

“Everybody knows the place. I
know. I’ve done guiding before this,
employer. You . . . you do have
money, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“All right. There’s a Montgraine
Road over here about a dozen
blocks. You remember what I said
about extra fee.”

“If it is the right place, I will
double the fee,” said Alan.

The light bearer promptly
doubled the fee to be doubled in his
own mind and led off at right angles,
down through a series of broken
streets and garbage strewn alleys.

“That’s my place over there,” he
volunteered. The government built
this whole section up about five
years after the last war and they
did a pretty good job, I been told.
But it’s kind of gone to seed now,
I’ll admit. This ten by ten lot di-
vision is a good thing, I maintain.
Let’s a man have a place in the good,

86

clean open air, a house near big
enough to stretch out and plenty of
space left to cook in when it don’t
rain. There’s the street.”

Alan looked at the unfamiliar
landscape. There were no lights, a
fact which his light bearer explained
was due to the need of employment
for light bearers, but there was a
general glow from many windows
and it was possible to see contour.
Sunnylawn had stood on a knoll.

“Is there a hill around here?”

“The guiding fee being in full
force,” said the light bearer, “there
is.” And he trudged off toward it.

From afar it was possible to see,
in this dimly lit area, that Sunny-
lawn was hardly a house and
grounds any more. The grounds
were chewed into small bits on
which crouched buildings not much
bigger than dog kennels even if they
were occasionally two-storied. But
above them loomed a building. Alan
recognized, at last, the barn where
old Montgraine had kept his flashy
trotters. He walked further, through
a maze of tiny streets and over a
slippery crust of garbage and mud,
to find the house itself, apparently
intact, rearing above him.

His heart skipped. Many of the
windows were lighted and how fa-
miliar it looked! He outdistanced
his guide-light bearer and came
around the corner to the front
porch. He was a little startled to
find the place inclosed for the ve-
randah .had been large and one of
the principle beauties of the house.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

But he went swiftly to the door.

Surging optimism placed no
slightest doubt between him and the
rack of cards he found there. He
swept aside this obvious evidence
that the place had been chopped into
apartments and lighting his lighter,
against all rules of the Light Bear-
ers’ Guild, he found her nam«!

“Miss Cerita Montgraine.”

Well !

He whirled on the bearer, gave
him a bill hit or miss from his roll,
told him a happy good-by and
pressed hard on the bell.

He waited. He straightened up
his jacket, adjusted his collar,
wished he had taken a moment to
remove some of the stain of the
Hound, realized how grimy his
jacket was and took it off.

Apprehensively he punched the
bell a second time. He was not
worried. It was not really late yet.
She would be up.

Chica. Well, he’d have to do
some fast explaining at being gone
so long. And he’d be very well
braced against seeing. her older than
he had really expected. Make her
as old as could be. That was all
right. It was his fault and they
could tie something together and
make a life of it. What if she was
even forty-five or fifty. That was
all right. A woman needed some
age to take proper care of a man.
Who had said that ? Queen? Funny
old Queen. And he’d been up there
where the stars were shining and
he’d thought he’d never get back.
What an entire fool he was. Joce-

TO THE STARS

87

lyn was right. He was a fool. He’d
figured he’d never get back and here
it was right on the bell, “Miss
Cerita Montgraine”. And how he’d
watched that speed dial !

He wished he’d taken a little
more time. He had mud on his
shoes. Water wasn’t plenty on a
long passage. Well, she’d under-
stand all that. She’d waited, hadn’t
she? She’d waited!

And there were footsteps on the
porch within and the door opened a
slit.

Alan beamed and got ready to
grab her in his arms.

But it was a sad-faced little dawrf
of a man, and he said, “Go away.”

Alan chuckled. What a ragged
tramp he must look. “I am sorry, I
have no card to send in. But I’m a
friend.”

He couldn’t resist the surprise
factors involved in it. How she’d
laugh with him.

“No friends. If you want money.
No money.”

Alan blocked the door from be-
ing shut. He grinned good-hu-
moredly. “Truly I am a friend. An
old friend.”

“Nope. Take your foot out.”
The man was frightened.

Hang it, he’d have to forego the
surprise. Maybe it was better. He’d
scare her enough, turning up from
the dead. “Don’t be afraid. No-
body is going to hurt you. An-
nounce”— he drew a breath— “Mr.
Alan Corday.”

The dwarf peered near-sightedly

in the dimness. “You ain’t govern-
ment ?”

“No, truly I assure you I am
not.”

“This ain’t no trick? ’Cause if it
is, I got some sharp medicine I give
to them that’s ailin’.”

“Friend, this is no trick. Your
mistress will know me instantly.”

“Well, I doubt that. But, keep-
in’' in mind my sharp medicine, you
can come up.”

“I think you had better announce
me first.”

“She’s ready to be looked at,”
said the dwarf. “And you mind the
medicine.” He opened the door and
hobbled across the porch and up the
stairs.

At the back of the house he
stopped and swung open a panel.
He looked in, nodded to himself and
said, “Miss Chica. Miss Chica!
Gentleman to see you callin’ himself
Mr. Alan Corday. Miss Chica, you
wake up. Gentleman to see you.”

A thin little voice answered him.
“I’m awake, Saib. I’m not in bed,
am I ? Of course I’m awake. I’m
dressed so I’m not in bed.”

“Gentleman to—”

“Here, let me!” said Alan, and
thrust the panel wide.

He was not certain what he saw,
after the first glance. Afterwards
he could not recall where she had
sat or how she had looked.

There was a mantle with some
crockery on it, some overcrowded
tables with China dogs and horses
on them, several heavy chairs and

88

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

a very narrow, covered bed.

“Is it going to rain ? All day long
I have felt it was going to rain. It
isn’t raining, is it?”

“Gentleman to see you !” Saib in-
sisted sharply. “You got to talk
up, mister. She don’t hear well.
But she’s sprightly. Dresses her-
self.” ■ •

“Oh, yes, of course, how foolish
of me. Well, sir. See you now.
Do be seated.. And what was the
name?”

Saib said, “Mr. Alan Corday.”
There was a brief, puzzled si-
lence. And then, “But he isn’t in.”
Alan sat down on a frail little
rocking chair.

“hie isn’t here,” she repeated in
some distress, twisting her tiny,
shriveled hands together.”

“Mister, don’t you go frettin’
her,” said Sail) menacefully. “She’s
a tenth class but she’s got her am-
nesty, because of her mind, you
know-. Recollect what T said about
medicine and don’t fret her.”

•“I was just about to have tea,”
she said. “Saib, bring in the tea
things and serve the gentleman. I
know I am dreadfully impolite not
to be more hospitable but ever since
my husband died I have kept alone
pretty much you see. You knew
him? A fine man. So strong and
handsome. And such a way with
him. He was an engineer-surveyor
and when he came back we were
married. You’d have liked him. I
don’t see very well but you look
young. Are you young, sir? Ex-
cuse an inquisitive old lady, hut

perhaps you knew one of our sons
in school. Ah, there’s the tea.
You’ll have one lump or two.”

Sail) put down the tray. It was a
barren tray, a heel of bread, a tiny
pat of butter and a teapot. She
poured shakily and sought to place
his cup beside him. Sail) quickly
assisted her an instant before dis-
aster.

“Heavens, you’d think I couldn’t
do a thing,” she said. “But you
were telling me about one of my
sons. Was it Raymond ? What a
good boy, he is. Writes me every
week. You do think he’s handsome,
don’t you?”

She sipped at her tea and set it
aside. “It does feel like rain. Was
it raining out when you came in?
I keep feeling it is going to rain,
Saib. Is it raining yet?”

“No, miss. It’s not raining,” said
Saib. “Maybe you didn’t hear.
This is Mr. Corday.”

Her hands shook bady as she
lifted the teacup. She appeared to
be very confused, peering about her,
shaking her head slightly, trying to
reach some memory.

“Oh,” she said with relief, “you
mean young Alan. Why, young
man. I’m awfully sorry. Young
Alan just isn’t at home. He went
out about an hour ago with some
girl. Heavens, what a dangerous
man he is. Broken hearts and the
best families. But lie’ll settle down.
Don’t you worry about any son of
mine, sir. They’ll all he a credit to
their father. All of them, sir. All
of them.”

TO THE STARS

89

Alan was standing, tearing at his
cap.

“Oh, do you have to go so soon.
And it’s such good tea tonight. Real
tea, but Saib is such a dear child.
Can’t you stay until Alan returns?
Until Alan returns? Until Alan re-
turns ?”

“Here, here,” said Saib. “You
are spilling your tea and getting the
rug all wet. You better go, sir.
The old lady won’t take excitement.
Her heart, you understand. And
she’s had a mighty promisin’ day
so far.”

“Good-by,” she said brightly.
“Good-by and do call again. I so
enjoyed your news about young
Alan. Saib, have them bring around
a car for Alan’s friend. It might
rain, you know. Good-by, sir.
Good-by.”

Saib took him to the outer door.
“She has her good days and her
had, good and had. Today’s a good
one. The doctor’ll he happy to hear
it when he comes tomorrow. He’s
an old white like myself— drove for
Greeson Graham in the old days, T
did, and would have paid for it with
my neck if they hadn’t needed
somebody to tend what was left of
the stables. Then the doctor two
years hack talked them into letting
me take care of the old woman there.
Got to liking her right well. Funny
old sort. You wouldn’t know what
happened to her, would you ? I
mean what drove her mad? Well,
maybe it was the revolution. It got
a lot of them. But somebody said
she was crazy even before that and

90

they didn’t execute her because . . .
well, I don’t know. She’s a good
sort and she doesn’t talk much.
Most words I ever heatd her speak
was tonight. And I feel letter serv-
ing a tenth class. Used to their
style, I guess. But don’t take no
truck about her family. Shucks.
She wasn’t ever married and she
sure hasn’t got any sons.”

He opened the door for Alan.
“Here, what’s this Money? Say,
this is an awful lot. Well, the old
lady can use some food, that I guar-
antee. Say, this is a lot of money!
Well, you can trust me to stretch it
out, though I guess she hasn’t got
much more time. . Must be eighty
now. I don’t get you, sir. You
never said what you come for. What
did you come for, mister? This
money?”

Alan, two hours later, found him-
self walking in the rain she had
feared. It was a heavy rain and it
soaked his white jacket through and
through.

He stood for moments and looked
at the lowering sky, gray in the
lights of the town.

She had said she thought it would
rain.

XII.

The quivering Hound of Heaven
hurled herself on course, blazing
bow to bridge with particle flame,
drives snarling with subdued fe-
rocity as they sped to higher speeds,
a lance of fire in the black of abso-
lute zero.

In two ship-years the bridge had

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

not changed much. There was a
new communicator man on his
watch, the old one dead' in a fight
on the Capella System ; the glass
had broken all the way out of the
speed dial; and Swifty sometimes
shook now as he relieved the watch.
Bnt otherwise it was the same, a
belt of black ports through which
one saw the march of stars, a worn
deck which was never washed, panel
on panel and rack on rack of meters,
dials and controls scummed each
one with grease.

Alan leaned against the rail in
the wing, fingers hooked in the
spaceman’s habit of never going far
from a handhold and never being
unprepared against ungravity. It
was the secured watch with a mini-
mum crew on stations. An hour
since they had “piped the belly” and
the food smell was still strong in the
ship, but weakening as the blower
filters cleaned the always foul air,
and the crowd, a hundred and fifty-
some strong, was in the ntesshall
still, having an impromptu sing.

The quartermaster had left the
ladder open so that they could hear
on the bridge and up it floated the
exultant strains of “Viva la Com-
pany”.

A friend on a left and a friend on
the right,

Viva la company.

In hale and good fellowship let us
unite

Viva la company.

Viva la viva la viva la Hound

Viva la viva la viva la Hound
Viva la Hound viva la Hound
Viva la company.

The steersman started to hum it
into the ensuing quiet. “Silence on
the bridge,” said Alan Corday.

The throb of the big ship seemed
louder and more intense at the
song’s end and the belt of ports. was
blacker. Alan looked at the speed
dial. They were rushing upwards
now to one hundred and fifty thou-
sand miles a second. They would
have their speed in a few more
watches. She was always uneven
through the hundred forties and he
was glad to be out of them. The
Deuce thought it was a fault in her
fuel catalysts. Ever since these new
drives had been installed ten trips
ago she’d had that characteristic.
But she was beating at it now. One
could barely see the needle move.
It was less tiring on the crew
through the hundred fifties and up
for one’s weight eased down as the
gravity curve decreased. But she
had to work for it and one could
feel her throbbing by touching his
finger to the rail.

They were singing again, “The
Spaceman’s Dream”. And Alan
beat slow time to it with his pencil,
delaying a change course compute
for spatial curve until the song was
done.

He had made some progress in
his navigation in two years. All the
minor computations he did now.
But his ears still burned when he

TO THE STARS

91

thought of Jocelyn’s discovery of a
tenth of a second error in his com-
pute one day.

“I don’t misdoubt, Mr. Corday,
that ' some day when I am old and
bent you’ll have mastered simple
trig. Mr. Hale, loan Mr. Corday
a hook on sphericals. You won’t
need one on arithmetic too, will you,
Mr. Corday?”

He stabbed the pencil into the
pad recalling it and looked up half
expecting to see Gow-eater close by,
on guard. But Gow-eater was a
suicide these past eight months, and
Alan, while very far from third in
command, went about his work
alone.

As the song finished he looked
again at the speed dial and then to
the course checkers and began his
compute for curve.

They began to sing “Voyage,”
timed to the thud of drives.

Up into the darkling sky
The Hound her how has reared
Up against the cold, clean stars
Her course is set and steered.

And high above Capella looms,

A pinpoint in the sky

While drivers throb and meters bob

A thousand years will die.

The captain he has checked the
course

The mates arc standing by
We’ll take our chance with meteors
And check commands gone by.

92

We’ll stand out to Capella’s glare
And thunder at the black
And lance the way and never stay
Until we’ve made the rack.

The daylight’s thin behind us now,
The careless stars arc dim,

The weakest oj the Circus crew
Is certain that we’ll win,

A full ten times a hundred years
Will pass as on we run
A full ten times a hundred years
Earth spins around the Sun.

Then hack we’ll be with' ore and gem
Enough a town to buy
The Hound but six months older
now

For only planets die.

God bless the mates
And keep our crew from harm upon
this day

And God bless Captain Jocelyn
Who walks his lonely way.

Alan squirmed a little. The song
was very old and, as it died away,
he was conscious suddenly of how
slightly he belonged, how casual was
their acceptance of him. With a
sudden shock he realized that in
more than two years of cruising he
had not made a friend.

He was Mr. Corday, the young
man who might some day become
third in command, someone to be
obedient to by duty and custom,
someone to consult on routine mat-
ters, the person to see when you
wanted minor hull repairs.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

But he knew suddenly that he had
never belonged. Wrapped in his
own griefs and dismays, he had for-
gotten the ship. And he looked back
now over the last two years with the
strange sensation that he had never
been quite within the hull.

There w r ere reasons for it, he told
himself quickly. There was the mat-
ter of mutiny. Not the one Queen
had contemplated, hut one which
had almost won, engaged upon by
five new men taken on Venus from
a wrecked system-liner crew. He
went shaky even now when he re-
called the apprehension of them and
the execution.

Jocelyn with the crew assembled
except for a skeleton watch, had
read quietly out of a small book
called the “Holy Bible,” had
dropped a dispassionate hand and
one by one, without suits, the five
had been dropped from an air lock
into the instant extinction of
vacuum and absolute zero.

He recalled suddenly the conver-
sation between Gow-eater and Mag
Godine.

“But they froze first!” Mag had
said. “So they don’t explode.”

“They explode first,” Gow-eater
had answered heatedly. “They
never get a chance to freeze.”

“I tell you,” said Mag, “that they
go floating around like planets, froze
stiff.”

“And I tell you/’ Gow-eater had
said, “that they become, instanter
and without delay, a pale, pink mist
of plain ordinary atoms. So there !”

They’d never settle it. Odd that

they, who had been so long in space,
with ample examples to cite, had
brought no facts into the argument.
It had ended with personal recrimi-
nations and Mistress Mag had not
spoken to anyone for days.

And watching them it had come
belatedly to Alan how narrowly
close he had come to that same fate.
It had made him very humble to
Jocelyn, the thought of it. And to
this day he had never spoken to
either Strange or Queen without a
surge of shame.

Not fear, he realized suddenly,
standing here on watch, listening to
a new song, shame. For Jocelyn
had picked him up and brought him
back that time after his first trip and
Jocelyn had been almost kind. And
he had once been a partner to a
plan which would have murdered,
as its very first step, Captain
Jocelyn.

He was suddenly nervous about
it again. . He did not understand
Jocelyn, but then nobody did.
Strange, cold Jocelyn, always me-
ticulously dressed in white, always
biting, never affected by anything.
Jocelyn and his whiskey and head-
ache powder. Jocelyn and his com-
mand of strange and ancient music.
Jocelyn and his sixth sense about
the ship. And Jocelyn, ruthless,
without principles or ethics or
morals— Alan understood no part of
him. And he detested the man
entire.

They began to sing “Why, Why,
Why Do We Cruise The Useless
Sky,” and Alan, for the thousandth

TO THE STARS

93

time faced that. And as it rolled,
rollicking, satirical, poking ridicule
at one and all, he again felt the
never quite absent surge of despera-
tion.

They had no purpose. They had
no goal. They were outcasts, con-
demned to exist until they died with-
out home or friends behind the skin
of this vessel, accomplishing noth-
ing, idly watching the parade of the
pointless centuries. Why?

Toward the end of the watch
Hale wandered up full of dinner
and songs sung, smoking a terrible
cigar, to check their position of ad-
vance, always an uncertain thing be-
fore speed was attained. Alan
watched him for a little while.

“Well, looks like we'll be on Earth
again in about nine hundred
watches,” Hale complacently roared
to the bridge in general.

Alan spoke up suddenly: “Why?”

Bucko Hale looked at him in as-
tonishment. He gawped for a mo-
ment and then, about to lose his
cigar, worked it over to the other
side of his huge mouth.

“We could have stayed on that
last planet,” said Alan.

“Could have—” began Hale, wits
accelerating slowly.

“Water, game, timber, fine cli-
mate, no dangers, small colony al-
ready started. I looked it over.
Didn’t you?”

“Stayed on . . . on O’Rourke?”
said Hale.

“Why not? We could do worse.
We’ve got odds and ends of the

94

crafts aboard. We have a govern-
ment. And we could live our lives
like people.”

“Live our lives—? What are
you ? Drunk ?”

. “Give me a good reason against
it.”

“Why, why . . . there’s plenty
against it. I—” And he floundered
and began to get angry because he
didn’t have an answer.

“We play tag with disaster every
trip. We’ll get back to Earth now
and who knows what we’ll find.
Certainly things will have changed
in the fifty generations we’ve been
gone. We’ll have, no more com-
mand ground with Earth this time
than we had last. They don’t want
us. They’ve got no use for us.
When we get a cargo they’ll clip us
badly because they knew that not
even their great-great-great grand-
children will ever lay eyes on us.
We serve no planet in the stars that
really needs us. Now tell me why
we didn’t stay on O'Rourke and
live like men.”

Hale looked irritably around and
drew himself up toward the explo-
sion point.’ “You tryin’ to breed
discontent? If you don’t like to
make a good liberty, then some peo-
ple do. Tf you don’t like sport and
plenty of money, that don’t mean
we’re all little gents. And,” he cried,
his voice rising arid strained, “if you
don’t like it, hit dirt next stop! You
don’t have to stay aboard !”

And Hale departed.

Alan had stiffened at the last
blast. He stood now, crimson, furi-

ASTO UNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ous. He knew they could do with-
out him. Jocelyn said it often
enough. He knew he didn’t really
belong. But it was not fair of Hale
to strike so hard with it in answer
to a simple uestion.

But was it simple ? When he
thought of his last trip in he won-
dered. The language had changed
so much that he had been very poor-
ly understood. For that matter, he
wasn’t even speaking good English
by this time but ship patois and “on
dirt”, trade pidgin, the timeless
lingua spacia. His own technology
was thirty-five hundred years for-
gotten and rusty on Earth. To fit
himself in to that society now he
would have to start in the first grade
and study everything from grammar
to manners. He did not belong on
Earth any more. He was homeless,
a wanderer in absolute zero and
eternity. But Hale need not have
driven it so hard.

He frowned. Jocelyn liked his
creature comforts. Why didn’t
Jocelyn see how really easy it would
be to make a new colony of his ship
on some hospitable star? Earth, no.
But a good planet in an astronomi-
cally reliable system— why not?

And then he recalled the bru-
tality of some of their visits and the
greed and licenses of the crew.
Those, he thought disheartened,
were answers.

XIII.

“She’s a bloomin’ antique,” said
the " yard superintendent, “but I

think she can be patched.”

Alan was somewhat astonished to
find himself nettled at the attitude of
this shirt-sleeved Earthman. It
seemed to him, each trip that the
race was not quite as vital as the
last time he had contacted it. And
this slur against the Hound, what-
ever the curses Alan himself gave
her, was not to be tolerated from
such plebeian lips. He got out the
first syllable of a biting rejoinder
and then altered his tone in mid-
flight. No professional ethics were
ever used on a long passage ship,
not in any age, and the lives of all
aboard might depend upon the good
will of this fellow.

“I am sure you can do some-
thing,” said Alan. “Of course, as
usual, you won’t have any spare
parts for her machinery but I think
we can reinstall whole units where
any spare parts are required.”

The yard superintendent looked
suspiciously at him. “You’re just
a young, fellow to be talking so hand-
some. You got authority for such
expenditure. It’ll come to a fine
piece of money.”

“I am in charge of construction,”
said Alan, holding hard to his tem-
per. “And I have authority to ex-
pend any necessary sums for her
repairs.”

“Hm-m-rn. Now you take that
hole in her bow, there. These old
false nose jobs aren’t so easy to
patch up. Have to remove all the
collision packing to get meteor
chunks out, if any, and build up new
braces and coilspring bulkheads . . .

TO THE STARS

95

cost . , . hm-m-m,” a calculating
glance at Alan, “cost around, say,
hundred and twenty thousand tylers,
more or less.”

Alan pulled out a small book and
made a pencil calculation on the fly-
leaf. He could not convert various
currency changes and his engineer-
ing had been taught to him in dol-
lars. He used the price of a dish of
ham and eggs as his medium of con-
version, those having cost, in the
average restaurant, about a dollar in
his time. This proposed repair was
then about thirty thousand dollars,
according to his check of the local
spaceport restaurant.

“Thirty thousand,” he muttered.
“Can’t do business for more than a
hundred thousand tylers.”

“Have to skimp the work,” said
the yard superintendent dolefully.

“Even,” said Alan, lowering his
voice, “if you get a personal two
thousand tylers on satisfactory com-
pletion.”

The superintendent glanced swift-
ly around and then winked. “You
long passage johnnies got a whole

book of tricks. Draggin’ the ages.”

Half the conversation he heard,
even when it was conducted in what
they called lingua spacia in the pro-
fessorial handbooks, was beyond
him now. Alan was developing the
unconscious conviction that wher-
ever he went he dwelt with for-
eigners. He would have contested
this in an argument for it is a fool-
ish idea indeed to have one’s coun-
try, socialist ically, linguistically and
ethnologically, all contained in a
metal hull.

“Now there’s the matter of air
tanks,” he said. “I suppose you
have something new in filters or
motors.”

The superintendent grew cunning.
What they called the mechanical
renaissance was hard upon Earth
and secondhand equipment was easy
to find, so rapid were designs
changed. He knew of some old units
he could get cheap— last year’s.
Alan looked them over, puzzled out
their principle, finally studied out
that they broke air into individual
atoms and used the unwanted im-

96

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

purities for power. Then he de-
duced that there must be newer
equipment from the signs of material
progress he saw all about him, de-
manded it and secured it, shining in
its packing crates.

“This afternoon,” said Alan, hav-
ing settled price on this, “I will run
up to New Chicago and get check-
ing estimates. I—”

“To where?”

Alan turned and looked north to
where the city sprawled, sixteen lev-
els high, suburbs extending eight
hundred miles all about.

“You mean Candia,” said the su-
perintendent. “I recollect somebody
sayin’ there was another town here
once, but Candia’s been around— let
me see— darned if I know. Maybe
six-seven hundred years. Real old.
We got some buildings they say go
clear back to the Third Triarchy.
Oldest in Halloland.”

“Where?”

“Halloland, the continent.”

“You mean North America.”
“Can’t say as I ever heard of that.
But about these estimates. You can
trust me. Point is, can I trust
you ?”

“Don’t worry about, pay,” said
Alan. “We were unloading half the
morning, or didn’t you notice?”
“Sure, but unloading what. You
long passage boys get some mighty
peculiar ideas about cargo some-
times. Saw a ship in here last May
on your crazy business and she’d
brought rocks. Just plain rocks.”
“Must have been more than that,”

said Alan. “Nobody would haul
rocks fifty or a hundred light-
years.”

“Yep, rocks. We had a lot of
trouble with that outfit. Thej, was
crazy as loons, the whole lot.
Claimed the stuff was called
uranium.”

“Had a use once,” defended Alan.

“You couldn’t prove it by me.
We looked it up in every book in
sight and couldn’t even find it. I
got a whole library out of the Wan-
derbar IV, thousand year old stuff.
Swapped the skipper even, sold half
as rare books, kept the engineering.
And no uranium. Just rocks.”

“But what do you use as fuel?”
said Alan.

“Sand.”

Alan blinked. “Well, took ’em a
long time. Low order fission, well,
well.”

“Low order what?”

“Fission.”

“Brother, we ain’t got it.”

“How do you burn the sand ?”

“Pour cataphan on it. Runs
about two million H.T.U. of heat to
the jig.”

“What’s an H.T.U. and what’s a
jig? - And what’s this cataphan?”

“Sonny, I ain’t got time to teach
school today. Swap you a complete
handbook and a dictionary for that
gun you’re packing. Be quite a find
to the museum. They really hang
around me in case you boys may
come in. Got a flag one day off ship
called Molly Murphy. Red, white
and blue. Stars. Pretty. They’d
been half across the galaxy, I guess.

TO THE STARS

97

Six thousand years or so. Price
they got for the junk they had
aboard made up for the cargo of
diamonds. Six tons of diamonds.
They’re over there on the other side
of that shed. You got any more of
those guns, I’ll swap you two burn-
ers, brand new for each.”

‘‘And a burner?”

“Side pistol you'd say. Two thou-
sand rounds. Cataphan.”

“What’s this cataphan?”

“Here, come in,” and he took
Alan into the shed office. He picked
up a phial and held it to the light.
It contained perhaps a quarter of an
ounce.

“That’s a jig of cataphan. Two
thousand tylers worth. They get
this stuff out of Pluto. It’s an ore
extract. Here, give me the gun and
you can have the books here.
Read?”

“Make a try,’ said Alan.

“Well, here’s a dictionary in and
out of lingua spacia. Had them
made up by the museum to accom-
modate you boys. Maybe six or
eight of you come in here a year
and while our main business is the
Saturn Line and the Sun Excursion
Company, we got to be accommo-
datin’. Got. the only old racks that
will take you boys anywhere on the
continent. And we mean to oblige.
Now this hill you mean to run up
here is around two million tylers.
You sure you’ll have cash.”

“We brought in an eight billion
tyder cargo of furs,” said Alan.
“What kind?”

“Lotus of Mizar puronic.”

“Gosh. You did? Say, you
boys must not care what you do.
And that’s smart. I seen one once
on a ritocrats girl friend. All yours
gold ?”

“Some scarlet taken in the cold
season.”

"Hey now, don’t let yourselves
get skidded. My r guess is they’re
worth twenty billion if anybody or-
dered eight, just on the principle.
Women will be women ”

“What’s this cataphan’s ore?”
said Alan.

“There in the hook. Small de-
posit on Pluto only one known.
Here’s a chunk of the ore. Like to
help you 1 u>ys out if—”

‘‘IF hc-ii’!” said Alan, unbending
in his excitement.

“Ahah! You’ve seen it?”

“A mountain of it, shedding
lava.”

“That ore is worth five hundred
tylers a jig. Here, have a smoke?”

Alan reached for the box and it
was almost withdrawn.

“Go ahead. But I just remem-
bered that I won’t even be dust
when vou come in here again. Blit
have a cigar anyway'. After all we’ll
be making ten percent of two mil-
lion off you boys. Go ahead and
have two cigars.”

Alan made the final arrangements
for racking the ship in the morning
and hastened up the gangway. Most
of the crew was “on dirt”, spending.
But Snoozer was sitting inside the
lock.

“Jocelyn aboard?”

98

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“He’s got some people lip there,”
said Snoozer, brushing out the folds
of a scarf she had wheedled out of a
peddler. “Are you going townside,
Mr. Corday.”

But Alan was up the ladder and
into the big cabins in a rush. He
had the ore in one hand, the diction-
ary and engineering book in the
other. “Sir—”

“And I assure you, gentlemen,”
continued Jocelyn blandly, “that no
other spot is so admirably suited to
a colony. Good air, unit gravity,
edible plants, Earthlike animal life.
Johnny’s Landing is, I am sure, the
ideal place.”

Alan stopped still, unable to be-
lieve what he heard. His own recol-
lection of Johnny’s Landing was
pungent with death and disappoint-
ment. He stood back,

“This is Mr. Corday,” said Joce-
lyn, “our second mate. A most tal-
ented , and accomplished young
engineer, a good example of the high
caliber of our personnel. Regiment
Hauber, Mr. Corday.”

Alan found himself shaking hands
with a white-haired, serene-faced
old man who, in turn, introduced
him to the four other members of
the party.

“Your Captain Jocelyn,” said
Regiment Hauber, in halting lingua
spacia, obviously but newly learned,
“has been acquainting us with some
of the prospects, Now what do you
think of Johnny’s Landing for a new
colony, young man?”

Alan started to speak in a rush
but he was halted by a flash in Joce-

lyn’s usually languid eye.

“He thinks highly of it,” said
Jocelyn. “He was once there. These
gentlemen head up a potential
colony, Mr. Corday. We may have
the pleasure of carrying them and
their equipment. Now tell these
gentlemen frankly what you know
of fohnny’s Landing. Is it fertile?”
“Yes, I—”

“And unit gravity?”

“Of course, .but— ”

“And you saw no animals except
those useful to man?”

“No, they-”

“And water and air were good ?”
said Regiment Hauber.

“Of course. But I—”

“What were you going to say,
Mr. Corday?” said Jocelyn. “Go
on and tell the gentlemen.”

Alan Lit his lip. His wits were
for a moment frozen by Jocelyn’s
presence and then suddenly they
whirred with answers. There was
a very faint mockery in Alan’s
voice when he replied. “I am cer-
tain that these gentlemen would find
Johnny’s Landing a splendid place,
sir. The very best, sort of place.
But perhaps the captain will not he
so agreeable when he learns some-
thing I have just discovered.”

Alan put down the hit of ore and
the handbook. “You can ask these
gentlemen about cataplian, sir. It
has displaced everything, uranium,
coal, oil, thermalon— ” He urged it
into Jocelyn’s hand. “And it is
worth two thousand dollars an
ounce.”

TO the stars

AST— 5S

99

Jocelyn looked up from the ore,
eyes narrowing as he studied Alan,
and then he thumbed at the hand-
book. Alan smiled at the old man
and his friends. He had liked them
on sight— sincere, quixotic with
idealism, trusting the whole Uni-
verse and bound outwards on col-
onization which in itself said much.
Most colonists were convicts, politi-
cal refugees, defeated nationals or
the eugenic outcasts. Once in a very
long time such a man as Regiment
Hauber and his friends undertook
the gamble of outer space. Earth
had neither encouragement nor dis-
couragement to offer. Occasionally
she exported unwanted to. the stars
—once, sometime back she had
loaded up the remaining half of a
defeated Venusian rebel navy and
had sent them outward bound. Alan
had met one of the ships on No. 5
Sun 16 , the vessel now in the trade
of the long passage. It was this
gesture of contempt on the part of
Earth which brought to him how lit-
tle Earth had to fear from colonies.

Regiment Hauber might or might
not know the truth about other sys-
tems. But a colony, laid down any-
where out there, could not expect
intelligence of its whereabouts to, re-
turn for generations. News would
not circulate widely in the vessels
of the long passage for more than a
handful of millenniums. No other
ships would stop unless the planet
was rich. It was abandonment com-
plete and isolation utter, a some-
what frightening prospect even to a
brave man.

100

Earth did not care to plant colo-
nies since there was no short term
advantage. But so far it had not
objected in the least to colonies be-
ing planted. Predicating their
philosophy on a continued advance
of Earth culture, the succeeding
governments on Earth knew that
nothing was to be feared from an
attack from outer space. Many hos-
tile and even terrible races had been
discovered out amongst the stars but
none with enough technology to con-
quer or attempt to conquer space.
Further, any attack on Earth by a
colony in the stars using Earth cul-
ture would find itself hundreds of
years, perhaps, behind Earth culture
in terms of weapons and ships. Tak-
ing the latest with him, Regiment
Hauber would be thirty years be-
hind technology on Earth the in-
stant he landed on Johnny’s Land-
ing. Even an already founded
colony, taking the latest technical
information from some ship on the
long passage, could not build up an
effective offensive force which
would compete with Earth. And an
attacker from some star would have
to compose itself of soldiers very
desperate indeed to leave their
homes forever behind them— for any
force from any star would not re-
turn home in time to resume con-
course with their peoples.

Earth, then, did not object to any
such activity. It cared little about
the long passage. It cared not at
all about Regiment Haubers and
their optimistic people. The drain
on Earth population in this manner

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

was minute but welcome, Earth, as
Alan had discovered that morning,
now numbering its peoples at ten
for every arable acre, about one
hundred sixty percent of what cur-
rent agriculture could provide.

But there were few volunteers for
the long passage. At least few who
had the money to go and the des-
peration to attempt it, for despera-
tion is no handmaid of cash.

“I trust you will have good
equipment, sir,” said Alan, to break
the silence of Jocelyn’s study.

Ilauher smiled benignly. “We
have the very best, Mr. Corday.
The very best. But of course we’ll
need the advice of old hands such
as yourselves and we’ll follow your
advices. You know what it is like
out there. We don’t.”

Jocelyn looked up alertly. “I re-
call the place you have in mind, Mr.
Corday. I recall it very well. And
I recall the mountain. It was un-
doubtedly this ore in contact with
silica at the base. Thank you for
your interest in the matter.”

Alan started to smile ; for once he
had got the edge on Jocelyn. But
he checked the smile with the re-
alization that Jocelyn never thanked
anybody for anything unless he had
something else in mind.

“Very instructive,” Jocelyn con-
tinued. “But if the Pluto deposit
is so small I don’t doubt but what
.they’ll have had to find a newer fuel
by the time we returned. Mr.
Corday is rather young, gentlemen.
Excuse his bursting in here with
this bric-a-brac. You may leave,

Mr. Corday. And if you find any
new marvels, pray don’t fail to re-
port them. Don’t fail.”

Alan gave him a glare of pure
hate and quickly about-faced. As
he left the room he heard the smooth
voice of Jocelyn saying, “Now, gen-
tlemen, about this venture. We can
take five hundred, if you don’t mind
crowding. We’re having new air
supplies installed of a very late pat-
tern and, after all, it’s only a few
weeks. But I would advise you to
cut your number in favor of freight.
Three hundred women, one hundred
men. It happens that I know of a
cache on Johnny’s Landing which
might be useful, but freight, after
all, is the important item. Besides,
at ten thousand tylers the passen-
ger-”

Snoozer was still at the air lock.
Alan scarcely saw her, such was his
bitterness over this venture. Ten
thousand tylers the passenger. And
a high bill for freight. And half a
dozen of the best young men shipped
forever and the prettiest women de-
tained and a colony planted where a
colony had suddenly perished be-
fore—

“Are you going to hit dirt?” said
Snoozer. “I have six ot these funny
tylers to—”

“The man’s a devil,” said Alan
with heat. “A devil ! A devil !”
And he walked angrily down the
gangway and out of sight while
Snoozer, drooping, her new scarf
not so pretty to her now, looked
after him through misting eyes.

TO THE STARS

101

XIV.

“Behold the funny passenger
Afloat in thinnest air
Missing on all gravities
His coffee in his hair . . .

Ye gods,” finished Queen, “I’ll be
happy when we can get this ship
cleaned out.”

Alan looked at her across the
wardroom table with a shudder of
distaste. She put down the tray of
bottles she had brought up from
Marby’s greasy lair and smoothed
her dyed hair.

Swifty laughed and reached for
his quart. “Good Sport the women
though, what?” he said.

“You young dog, you,” said
Queen. “Your own people not good
enough for you. When are you go-
ing to take up regular, dearie? My
shoes have been outside my door
for years.”

“The only thing which keeps me
hack,” said Swifty, “is a frightful
respect of that bally knife old Marby
carries, dear. Tiri-liri-tura-lu, first
one today.”

“First bottle, yon mean,” said
Queen. “Well, I’ll have to carry
on the picture of unrequited love,
honey. Here are your cigarettes,
Mr. Corday.”

He broke the seal on the pack
and selected one. They were get-
ting hard to come by. Nobody in
the Solar , System, it seemed, had
smoked them for centuries. He
scribbled his name on the chit and
handed it back.

Queen took it coolly, lifted the
102

tray and with a rumple through
Swiftv’s hair, departed.

It was a little gesture. Alan lis-
tened to her receding heelbeats.
Suddenly, as she had smiled at
Swifty, Alan knew how very lonely
he was. He had neithef liking nor
respect for Queen, for her brawls
with Marby, tor her native unscrub-
bedness— for even after he had in-
stalled the re-use system for water
a couple of trips ago, making unlim-
ited water available, Queen, too long
in space, had stayed unwashed. He
winced at her bawdy jokes and at
her familiarities with everyone from
apprentice spaceman to Hale. .But,
he had realized abruptly, she was
still part of the ship, part of his
country. And like his country and
his ship she now ignored him.

He lighted the precious smoke
and found it had no flavor. He
looked at Swifty, lounging at the
foot - of the table, soaking up coffee
royal in a moment stolen from the
bridge with Jocelyn, for once, on his
proper watch. Swifty was good-
hearted to everyone and yet even
Swifty seemed distant to him.

“Swifty,” he said suddenly, mean-
ing to go on and ask his question.
“Eh?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh.”

Alan twisted around uncomfort-
ably and looked the other way. He
knew he had a lot of things to over-
come. He had a manner which had
been born into him— abrupt, aloof
as became a tenth class. He knew
he had a lot of failings in his asso-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ciation with his fellow man. It was
not easy to he here, in this varie-
gated company, and have no single
intimate. Couldn’t lie torget he was
a tenth class? Maybe that was what
was wrong with him, A tenth class
— But where was the tenth class
now? Not any on Earth but the
most learnedly profound professor
of ancient history knew what a tenth
class had been now. How did a
man shed his background. Could
he do so ?

Strange, ingratiating to all, even
Alan, had said something one night
about wiping out experience from
the mind. Strange had claimed that
an ancient work he had seen in his
youth, gave forth a method which
would eradicate even loyalty from
the mind. If he could just forget—
But he shuddered at the vision of
some of t he crew, empty- eyed people
on whom Strange had worked. He
turned hack and was about to ask
Swifty what the crew thought of
him when his cigarettes, which had
been floating upwards from un-
gravitv fell with a crash into his
empty coffee cup. He started up,
as the whole crew always did with
a change in the vessel and then sank
back.

“Check blasting for a land, wliat?”
said Swifty. “Thirty watches we’ll
be in and then, heigh-ho, to work
we go. That young Bill the Eye
will do the work though. Jolly good
joke. He’s so crazy about piloting
lie hasn’t found out yet what hard
work it is.”

This interested Alan. “Who gave

you authority? Why, he’s just a
child. Twelve, isn't he?”

“Bine pilot. Bit reckless though.
Buzzed a parade last look-see on
Earth. Had to hat him to make him
stop. Born flyboy.”

“You mean he’s got whole con-
trol? Swifty, Bill isn’t big enough
to see out of a cockpit.”

“Got to start ’em sometime,” said
Swifty.

“But the plane. That’s the only
one we’ve got!”,

Swifty sat up. “Oh, bosh, Cor-
day. Come off it and try to live like
us mortals.” And Swifty, good-
natured Swifty, took up his bottle
and left the wardroom without a
backward glance.

Alan glared at the pilot’s hack
and then, after a moment, slumped,
staring with hurt eyes into his
empty cup.

Snoozer, big- eyed, clean scrubbed
hesitated outside the door. , Then
she rapped with a hurst of courage.
“Cap’ll compliments, Mr. Corday,
and he wants a navigational check.”

Alan rose and walked past her to
the ladder which led down to the
bridge.

“You forgot your cigarettes, Mr.
Corday,” said Snoozer, snatching
them up.

He took them and went on.

XV.

Johnny’s Landing presented a
slightly altered aspect. It was
speckled with farms and cities,
laked with artificial dams and netted

TO THE STARS

103

with something Alan recognized as
ancient power lines. This, to the
Hound, sudden change was ex-
tremely disagreeable to Jocelyn.

On his bridge, binoculars clenched
in a savage hand, Jocelyn’s face was
bone-white with hatred. It startled
Alan that the pleasant prospect of
the domed little cities which
stretched out of the hilltop on which
they had landed could so affect the
captain, .^.nd then Alan took down
his own binoculars from the rack
and inspected for himself.

The hill on which they stood was
some five hundred feet' above the
plain. And the bridge of the Hound
reared three hundred and eighty feet
above her tail so that the view was
very fine.

But in three seconds of looking
with his binoculars at fifty power,
Alan saw, though with much less
emotion, what Jocelyn had beheld.
There was a small army, headed
by half a dozen tanks and followed
by artillery, coming up the road
from the nearest city.

But they were not men.

“Corday!” snapped Jocelyn,
strained white with ferocity, “take
a party of twenty with hand weap-
ons and attack!”

Alan stared for an instant at
Jocelyn and then looked back at the
horde. It must number half a thou-
sand with reinforcements running
in across fields. Then he saw the
antiquity of the weapons.

“Aye, aye, sir,” he said. And
five minutes later he was going

104

down the hill to a defile in the rocks
a mile and a half from the ship,
twenty crewmen at his back and Bill
the Eye skipping along beside him
in a high quiver of excitement,
elated and crowing at having been
grabbed up as a messenger.

“Seen ’em when I was about
five,” said Bill, tow hair standing
straight up. ‘-‘The Earth colony here
used ’em as slaves. Then they all
died off from something. But you
was here when we landed the last
time. Guess in the thousands of
years since I was ten they sprung
out of some place again.”

Alan was appraising the oncom-
ing forces. He swept his men into
double-time and threw them into
position on either side of the road
in the defile, ready with an enfilade
hand fire when the range was two
miles.

“Old Jocelyn’s death on these sen-
tient races,” chattered Bill. “Seen
him burn down five hundred thou-
sand Gleeanites oncet. Burned ’em
clean off Majority Capella. That
was before your time. You got any
chewin’ gum?”

Watching that crawling snake of
an army, Alan shuddered a little. It
was a chilly thing. These “people”
had no features or eyes that he
could see through his glass. Then
he shifted to their nearest town and
then to a power line. Strange but
those things were quite different
from anything he had ever seen in
the ancient histories of Earth. With
sudden amazement he shifted back

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

to the oncoming army. The things
could evolve a society that included
finite physics. And then a slight
chill hit him. If they could get this
far, they could some day throw ships
into the long passage. And that
army showed they had no slightest
use for man.

“You goin’ to pile ’em up all at
once?” said Bill. “Or pick, ’em off
at long range?”

Alan ignored him. He took a
pocket ranger out and sighted in a
far white boulder at one and a quar-
ter miles. He passed the data along
to his tensely waiting spacemen.

On came the brown snake through
the dust. The leading tanks
breasted the white boulder. Eyes
were on Alan’s hand as he raised it.
On came the snake, swelling as
things wriggled over walls and
dropped into the road to march on
with it.

Half the snake passed the white
boulder. With a short, vicious
chop, Alan brought down his arm.
The defile crackled, the air ionized,
the daylight went dim.

There was a shudder in the center
of the snake. And the air crackled
on. Dust, and smoke from ignited
pavement curled upwards, speared
lazily into the sky and obscured the
slaughter. The pall grew dense,
grew black, grew inner-lit with red
tonguing flames. The valley was
full of stench and. smoke.

And then, suddenly, a hundred
yards to their front emerged from
out the rolling clouds, three tanks.
Tubes from them were bucking and

leaping and spitting scarlet. Rock
splinters flew upward before Alan’s
face and he fell back, stunned. The
spacemen, firing still at range given,
wildly readjusted their hand weap-
ons. And a tank churned in
amongst them.

There was a crash from the ship
as its forward battery fired, rending
the air overhead into green tatters.
Bill the Eye snatched at Alan’s side-
arm, threw over its catch and just
as the tank turned to depress its
muzzles, Bill shot.

There was an explosive boil of
molten metal and fragments of a
blazing thing. Bill fired again for
good measure.

Two hours later Alan, wearing a
bandage, stood to on the quiet
bridge, waiting for Jocelyn. Alan
knew what he was going to be told.
Fie had erred in not picking off the
armor in the van and in forgetting
it could come forward at high speed
under the cover of the smoke and
dust. He had had one crewman
killed because of it. And he had
been rescued by young Bill the Eye,
a messenger.

Jocelyn had been down conferring
with Regiment Hauber as they dis-
embarked to take possession of a
countryside which was a going con-
cern— if potentially depopulated by
Swifty’s quick flight with virus over
the towns of these hideous things.

At last Jocelyn came up on the
bridge. Alan stiffened. After the
first glance Jocelyn walked away
and went into his cabin.

TO THE STARS

105

XVI.

It had been a long and tiring voy-
age and they all showed the strain.
The old Hound of Heaven was in-
capacitated in part by the accumu-
lated breakdowns of a trip which
had taken a year and which had not
touched any place where adequate
supplies or fuel could be had.

From Johnny’s Landing to Para-
dise Alcor, from Paradise Alcor to
Sweeney Merak, from Sweeney
Merak to Coppaccine Dubhe and
Coppaccine Dubhe to Earth, or as
the pilot had it, to Earth Sun. It
was a route known on the long pas-
sage as the Big Bear Circuit, touch-
ing as it did the main colonies of
the constellation Ursus Major alias
the Dipper. And things bad not
been well on Coppaccine Dubhe
where on previous trips there had
been spare parts. And so it was with
something like relief that they en-
tered the outer atmosphere and let
Swifty go.

They waited for him with op-
timism, the women talking of what
they would buy, the crewmen happy
at the prospect of better food and
guns and replacements to ease the
strain of watches. But that changed
when Swifty came back and the ru-
mor fled through the ship : Earth
hdd been at war. But the war was
done and had been done for several
hundred years.

Jocelyn drifted clown toward their
old spaceport and one-time New
Chicago. And from the ports, black
so long with space dark, a haunted

106

crew looked down on grassy
mounds where cattle grazed and at
a plain where a drowsy river ran.

And Jocelyn looked at the scrib-
bled scrawl of Swifty’s report,
squared his shoulders and began to
con. They came in two hours above
an area which Alan had once known
as Colorado and where now stood a
sprawling, irregular city some hun-
dreds of miles in extent.

The tired crew and the battered
ship eased down, for a spaceport lay
below. It was a strange sort of port,
but it had a spaceship on it, like a
shaft of albabaster. And Jocelyn
jockeyed the Hound of Heaven
down beside it. A rough landing,
on the last ounce of her take-off
fuel.

The space locks clanged open and
sunlight and air rushed in. The
crew stood by, ready for word from
the bridge to “hit dirt.” But the
word did not come.

Jocelyn looked at the gates of the
port and saw that they were metal
gated. He swept a glass around
the area from the vantage height
of the bridge. It was all inclosed.

And there was not a single hu-
man being in sight.

Jocelyn coughed. He looked
tired. Since his exposure on a plan-
et, deceptively inviting but poison-
ous with beryllium oxide, he had
not been well. And the rumor had
crept quietly through the ship that
Strange had said he might die, vic-
tim of a loose valve in a space hel-
met.. He pressed a silken handker-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

cmer to nis .
turned to H
“What do
“Maybe t
said Hale.

of being on Earth again. It was so
still.

He rapidly covered the distance
to the other ship, reading off her
name before he swung up her gang-
way. She was the First Fairaway
of Mars.

“Hello the officer !” he hailed for-
mally.

His voice made a curious echo in
the vessel and something made him
clutch his sidearm as he stepped
through the port.

But she was empty.

He stepped further in, alert. But
she was not only empty of men, she
was empty of equipment as well.
He glanced upwards and found him-
self looking five hundred feet to her
bow ports down which came two
eerie shafts of sunlight to dimly
light the interior of this hulk. She
was without men, without equip-
ment, without decks. Just a hulk.

Alan sped back to the Hound and
reported tersely.

“Hale,” said Jocelyn, “take
fifteen men and test the gates. If
they are locked, make no overt move
but call any human you may see
and demand freedom of the port.”

Hale grinned. He pulled down a
battle helmet, huge as a caldron,
buckled a brace of sidear,ms around
his ample middle, stuck a cigar in
his face and lighted it. Alan was
struck by Hale’s exaggerated casual-
ness, by the strangeness of his smile.

“So long, skipper,” said Hale.
“Keep your pointers up, Corday.”
And he dropped down the ladder
and was gone.

108

After a little while they saw him
muster his volunteers and fan them
out. And then Hale marched across
the wide plain of the port to the
main gates, his people spread far on
each side of him, his weapons in
hand.

The party grew small in the dis-
tance. The fan contracted a trifle
as it neared the main portals. Joce-
lyn stifled a cough and gave a warn-
ing to the bridge deck gunner to
look sharp.

But there was no chance of the
gunner coming to bear.

With a suddenness which meant
long planning and great practice,
with a blaze which meant enormous
ability in explosives, the ground tore
asunder under the party’s very feet.
And through the gates came long
tongues of brilliant orange.

The smoke was heavy but out

ahead of it burst Hale, waving his

arm to his men to come on. Three

*

struggled up and sought to follow
that roaring war cry. And then the
gates flamed again, struck out and
struck down. Hale stopped. He
turned around, staggering, torn al-
most in half. He fixed his eyes on
the ship and half-lifted his huge
arm. And then once more the
gates blazed forth and Hale fell
heavily to Earth, the last of his party
to die.

Alan turned, on the verge of
raging fury, ready to kill the bridge
gunner where he sat. But reason
tugged him and he knew that Hale’s
closeness to those gates would not

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

admit such a thorough blast as the
bridge guns would have made.

The icily emotionless voice of
Jocelyn sawed through the stillness
of the place. “Turner, load smoke.
Fire smoke. Snoozer, pass the
word. Smoke.”

And the bridge gun snarled as it
hurled out charge after charge,
bucking and reeling with recoil and
elsewhere in the ship other guns
roared into a thundering chorus.

And then they stopped.

An area of ten square miles was
blanketed ' thick with drifting but
impenetrable smoke.

“Fire on image!” snapped Joce-
lyn.

The bridge gunner flicked the
switch on his memory plate and be-
gan to chop bursts at the gate, now
everywhere invisible except in his
sights.

“Saturate with G19,” said Joce-
lyn. And Snoozer spoke into the
ship circuits. “Seal the ship!” said
Jocelyn.

A moment later the multiple bat-
teries made the hull shake as they
hurled charges out into the smoke
which, at least in other days, had
foiled detectors which might search
for the Hound.

“Saturate with RG,” said Joce-
lyn.

“Saturate with RG !”said Snoozer.

And the batteries on other decks
vibrated as they hurled forth re-
gurgitant gas to cling to the particles
of smoke.

She had been used as a merchant
vessel. They might have better

TO THE STARS

ashore. She was old and tired and
her technology had been theirs un-
counted centuries ago. But she
fired and sought to defend herself.
And the Deuce stared with anger
at the empty tubes where there was
no take-off fuel.

Alan had already taken down his
helmet and was looking to his gun.

“Battle party stand by the star-
board ground lock in full space
kit,” said Jocelyn.

“Battle party stand by the star-
board ground lock in full space kit,”
repeated Snoozer.

Alan turned alertly to Jocelyn.
There had been other battles in the
outposts in the stars. And the com-
mand of the second battle part
would devolve on the remaining
mate.

“Where do you think you are go-
ing, Mr. Corday?” said Jocelyn,
taking his own suit from the hands
of Mistress Luck. His spacesuit
rustled as he put it on. He fixed
the helmet in place, tapped at the
voice multiplying switch at his col-
lar to nul it for a moment.

Alan sagged as he recognized in
this the contempt Jocelyn had al-
ways shown him.

“Mr. Corday, I leave you in
charge of the vessel. Regardless of
what happens to me, you will not
quit the ship with her remaining
crew but will do all in your power
to defend her at her own ports. You
are sufficiently informed of these
things to sell her not inexpensively
should I fail.” He took to cough-
ing and the eyes of Mistress Luck

109

were round with concern. He
cleared his throat then and con-
tinued. “You are young and im-
pulsive and have many faults to
overcome. Let no quixotic stupidity
lead you to risk this vessel and the
women, children and crew which re-
main within her' unless you have
clear and unavoidable cause. I will
be back, I am sure. Remember
that,” he added harshly.

Pegging his helmet again, Alan
turned away. Behind him he heard
Mistress Luck adjusting buckles on
Jocelyn’s spacesuit. It was a bitter
thing to be so shunted aside. An
empty thing, “in charge”, for in the
absence of all seniors, he had been
“in charge” many times before. A
tradition. No more. He was obvi-
ously not considered trustworthy
enough for this task. And yet,
twice since Johnny’s Landing he
had proved himself and proved him-
self well in the field.

There was a rumble somewhere
below as landing force equipment
was rolled out. Ancient equipment
but it worked and it might serve.
Alan knew what Jocelyn would do
—blast through an unexpected point,
take the besiegers in the rear, de-
tach a small party to scoop up im-
portant officials or officers in a
swoop raid while all the fireworks
and purpose seemed to be directed
elsewhere ; and they would hold the
hostages against supplies. Long
passage practice, time worn and
usually successful.

110

“Sir,” said Irma, the bridge
talker on the landing evolution,
“can I run down for a minute i and
tell Joe good-by.”

“Stand by your post!” said Alan.
And he hurled his sidearm back into
its holster.

A moment later he was sorry.
There would be people killed in that
landing party. And he almost re-
lented but stopped in the act of
turning and walked forward to the
bridge gun which was manned. The
memory plate still gleamed with the
image of the gate but the gate was
certainly no longer there. He faced
the detectors. The operator was
gone, member of the first landing
party, dead now. His replacement
had left with Jocelyn. But Alan had
installed these things new, last trip
in.

He polarized the beams until they
righted a path through the swirling
density of smoke which now com-
pletely obscured the ports, even
coated them. Then he sought to
tune to get an image. But the pro-
tective barrage was too good. There
was not even a faint blur on the
screens.

Nervously he went over to the
communicator ledge. It was ringed
with the marks of Swifty’s count-
less bottles and he recalled Swifty.

“Pass the word for Swifty,” he
told Snoozer. “I want him to count
noses still aboard.”

Snoozer slid away down a ladder.

Alan was listening intently for
any firing outside. It would be hard

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

to hear through this sealed and in-
sulated shell but it would not he
impossible. But he heard no firing.
The smoke and its components had
gulped up the second landing party
and every sight and sound.

Swifty gangled up the ladder.
“Got it, Corday. We’re trimmed
down to five old men, forty engi-
neers and technicians, sixty-eight
women, thirty-one kids and thee and
me. But I think some of the kids
are a bit too young to man a gun.
Little chappie back there said, ‘Glug,
glug’ when I wanted to know his
proper emergency station. Had a
mouthful of milk.”

“Break open the storage arsenals
and serve out weapons,” said Alan.
“Pass the word all hands in masks
and full battle kit, gamma-proof
spacesuits. That means all hands.
That smoke is deadly.”

“That isn’t all that may get dead-
ly around here, eh? Well, get me a
short drink and hobble on my way.
But they’ll make short work of us,
you know, when they begin to feel
for us with high-powered stuff.”

“The smoke is heated and their
detectors won’t locate us unless
they’ve got telepathy machines !”
snapped Alan. “And they want this
ship for what they can salvage out
of her. The other was gutted. They
won’t shoot this way ! Don’t spread
any sad conversation about it.”

Swifty shrugged, poured himself
a small shot, downed it and gangled
below.

Nervously Alan tuned his ears for
the sound of firing. There had not

been any yet, so far as he could tell,
lie felt left out of it. The safest
post in the whole fight was here.
Jocelyn hadn’t trusted him enough.
But the emergency was great and
they were lost entirely if the sec-
ond landing force failed.

There had been very little wind,
the screen would take a long time
to dissipate. But he wondered if he
might not be wise to create a diver-
sion by banging away into the town
at long range. But 'no, that would
bring the attackers here into the
desperate necessity of destroying
the ship. He would wait it out.

“Post a man outside,” he said to
the returned Swifty. “I want him
to use his ears. Maybe we can tell..
Give him a phone.”

“Won’t that spot us, old boy?”

“That happens to be the least of
our worries,” said Alan. “Post the
man.”

“If you say so,” shrugged Swifty
and gangled off on the errand.

Alan worriedly twisted at his
scarf, realized what he was doing
and hurriedly stopped. Waiting was
hard.

XVII.

To allay his increasing nervous-
ness Alan concentrated his mind on
the possibility of take-off. But there
was no answer there. A ship which
used particle drive had to use non-
radiant fuel for maneuvering close
to ground. And while they had
enough high drive to take them hack
to the stars— having wisely provided

TO THE STARS

111

against that sometime day when
Earth would no longer be able to\
furnish fuels from herself and sister
planets— their alpha supply was
done. Even their last landing had
almost knocked them apart from
conserving the last dyne. To take-
off on high was unthinkable. Touch-
ing off their main power this close
to Earth would, with zero initial
velocity, simply blow them to pieces
to say nothing of cutting the Earth
crust to a depth of forty miles or
more and drowning the tiny frag-
ments of ship and man in lava.

He now and then called for a re-
port from his lookout. Firing had
crackled sporadically toward the
town for some minutes now but it
was impossible to judge what might
be happening beyond the certain
knowledge that Jocelyn had made
hot contact with something.

It made Alan fume to be stand-
ing here, idle, trapped and to think
of his fellow shipmen out there
waging war with high odds. If
Jocelyn lost—

The ship knew much of what
would happen and might be able to
guess the rest. If this city merely
took the survivors prisoner, the peo-
ple of the Hound were still lost for
their ship would be lost and they,
all of them, were millenniums out
of phase.

At last Alan sent a messenger
groping out toward the firing. The
boy did not go far before he re-
turned along the string he had laid,
leading a wounded member of Joce-
lyn’s party.

The man was dreadfully ill, his
spacesuit opened by some scorching
missile, his right arm burned nearly
off, his lungs full of RG and smoke.
Alan came down the ladders with a
rush to the sick bay where they had
taken him. It was the detector
technician.

Strange and his assistant were
stopping the arterial bleeding when
Alan came in.

■ “Get a motor on him and pump
out his lungs !” said Alan. “Eve got
to talk to him.”

“Pretty terrible shape,” said
Strange. “Better let me give him
some nerve drain.”

“No,” said Alan. '“He’s got to
talk. The data he has is more
important.”

“It might kill him.”

“Not knowing might kill this
ship!” said Alan. “Do what I tell
you !”

Strange sighed and pulled out the
tubes of the device they used when
suits leaked on planets with poison-
ous air. He attached it and in a
short while, beginning to writhe un-
der the stimulus of an awakening
shot, the technician was ready to
talk.

Under Alan’s insistent hammer-
ing he finally answered : “Lost . . .
the party into . . . town. I . . . was
one of them. Skipper pinned down
. . . thousand men ... no uniforms
. . . got funny weapons—”

“Put him to sleep,” said Alan.

He pounded a fist into his palm
again and again as he went up the
ladders, scowling and racked. Sud-

112

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

denly he turned and went back, by-
passing the sick bay and diving into
the engineering compartment.

The Deuce was there, ears
strained to the distant firing, heard
faintly through the hull.

“Get your tools. All the men
you’ve got, foil kit and follow me J”

“What’s up?” said the Deuce.

“Jocelyn is held up, probably su-
perior weapons against him. We’ve
got to work fast.”

“Reinforcements?” said the
Deuce.

“Follow me!” said Alan.

Snoozer was just behind him. He
had not noticed before how close
she had stuck. “Pass the word, all
hands full space kit, outside.”

She darted off and in a short time
Alan stood beside the after lock
watching the ghostly shapes of the
crew assembling in the swirls of
smoke outside. There were not
many left. Most of them women,
some of them carrying babies, all of
them carrying weapons.

“Thought we were to stay—” be-
gan Swifty.

“Deuce,” said Alan. “Take your
people aft. Call, anyone else you’ll
need for work or transport. Dis-
mount a high drive and its load.”

“Do what?” said Deuce, a thin
shadow in the smoke.

“Do as you’re told,” said Alan.

Deuce, puzzled, called off several
names and vanished. Alan with-
drew the rest from the vicinity of
the ship after checking that none
were now aboard but two sick and
the assistant to care for them.

Alan posted Bill the Eye with a
pack communicator near the shift
and gave the equipment mate of it to
Irma, already burdened with a two-
year old.

“You stand by,” said Alan to Bill.
“Jocelyn or any survivors come
back, route them compass north and
up the east side of the hill above
here. You saw it coming in? The
town lies mainly west. Bad terrain
east of it. Tell anyone to come up
the east slope to the crest and under
no circumstances to approach the
hill from the west or they may get
shot.”

“Sure,” said Bill.

Alan fumbled through the smoke
to the engineers working on the
drive and gave them the benefit of
his shoulder. They had it dis-
mounted in seven minutes, long
practiced from changing drives in
full flight. And they wrapped ropes
around it so that.it could be carried.

With a -final check on Bill, Alan
led off by compass. Half his party
were engaged with the drive’s trans-
port, the remainder were spread out
as flankers and rearguard. Alan and
two engineers with disintegrating
torches led the van.

“How yet know we can climb
that hill?” panted the Deuce behind
Alan. “And how do yer know if it’s
even there?”

“Anyone trained in surveying no-
tices topography,” said Alan. “And
compass directions. Pass the word
now to be as quiet as possible and
keep close.”

TO THE STARS

113

When they reached the metal
fence to the north, almost colliding
with it in the dense smoke, Alan let
go with the torches and burned out
a hundred foot section. He threw
a scouting party through this and
then called up his main body.

They passed through a dimly seen
residential area and trod twice on
unmasked men in agonies of vomit-
ing in the street, a sight which great-
ly cheered them all.

Pressing on through the smoke
they came to rising ground. It was
steep and here everyone, had to lend
a hand on the ropes. The drive,
usually handled by cranes or in the
ungravity of cruising, did not offer
an easy problem in this precipitous
ascent.

So engrossed were they and so
heavy was the smoke that they came
solidly into a blockhouse, point-
blank. Swifty, in thes.van, fired fast
and heaved a grenade in at the door.
Unmolested they went on up.

Blowing and wheezing they came
at length to the hogback of the ridge
and began to ease the drive down.

“If I knew what you were do-
ing—” complained the Deuce.

“Bear a hand,” said Alan.

Two hundred feet, down they
came to a hillside home, built here
as some rich man’s whim, clinging
to the perpendicular but command-
ing a view. A track went down
from it, a private railway.

Two servants were -present, claw-
ing in exhausted misery at ' the
boards of the sun porch. Alan
crisply ordered a spare mask to be

114

put on the man. He gave no sec-
ond thought to the woman.

Thrusting pack spades deep into
the formal garden they butted in the
drive, angling up its nose until Alan
was satisfied. People not intimate
with the engineering department
were happy to get away from it, sus-
picious of its radioactiveness and
none too confident of the ability of
their spacesuits to prevent burns
and none too confident of Strange’s
serum against gamma rays with
which they all were customarily shot
when it was put this near to a test.

With the others retired, Alan and
the Deuce installed a throttle and
an igniter and the engine was ready
to do its customary duty in an un-
accustomed setting.

Alan went into the house and at-
tempted to question the man serv-
ant lit it the fellow was too terrified
to talk and when shot with a catalyst
was too exhausted to do anything
more than sleep. Disgusted at the
balk of his needs, Alan ranged the
place, looking for the phone. He
passed it several times without see-
ing what it was, for he had supposed
that the wall screen was video. Then
he found what he wanted, an index
book of the city. The town, he
found, squinting through face-plate
and smoke at the strange script,
seemed to be known as St. Dennis-
ton and the main exchange was Den-
ver. Then he sighed with relief and
gave himself a little more air to clear
his thoughts and perceptions.

In the back of the book was a map
of exchanges for the purpose of long

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

distance and after that was another
map of the central section. It was
difficult to read the printing but, by
checking against the index itself he
found what he wanted to know.
They had landed at the capital city
of the “Third Estate” and from the
frequency in the book of the name
“Consoundalin” he concluded that
it was the individual in power. He
cross-checked what he had found
with a basket full of tape which
proved to be a newspaper and dis-
covered he was right. He tore a
page from the book and went back
to the drive.

.There was a little more shifting
and then Alan sent all of his party
up the hill and over the crest. Keep-
ing the Deuce and Snoozer with him
he unreeled throttle wire down the
slope and to the right until they
found another residence, a quarter
of a mile from the first.

Here were other servants, all ill,
all too deep in their own exhaustion
to be interested. No “upper class”
was in the house but there was a big
wall screen there. The Deuce fum-
bled with it for a while and at length
discovered that by sitting down on
the seat beside it, it lighted.

A girl glowed into three-dimen-
sional being on the screen, a pretty
girl, white, without much on.

“Give me Command 1,” said
Alan.

She frowned, trying to under-
stand what he meant, and then asked
for a repeat.

“Huh!” said the Deuce. “If that’s

the language now, I’m glad I’m on
the long passage!”

Alan held up the torn index,
pointing to the number. The screen
blurred, showed a pretty picture
during the wait and then flashed on
as an office. Both the exchange and
this office were obviously beyond
any smoke pall the old Hound could
hope to throw. There was a grand
unconcern on the military aide’s
debonair face when he looked up
and spoke.

“This is the Hound of Heaven,”
said Alan. “Sec . . . first mate
Corday speaking.”

“Eh?” said the aide after the
fashion of aides speaking to in-
feriors. “Eh?”

Alan was talking lingua spacia
and the aide finally grasped the fact,
grasped it with some surprise. He
stood up and called to another office
and. a man in a naval uniform en-
tered, the naval aide.

“This is the Hound of Heaven,”
said Alan.

“Really?” said the naval aide.
“And what would that be ?”

“A ship from the long passage,”
said Alan.

The aide tensed and then relaxed
with a smile. “Didn’t know you
had a phone, you know. Interest-
ing hook-in, isn’t it? Understand
you’re in a trifle of a jam. Might
tell me what your cargo is. The
old man is interested in cargoes
since the embargo.”

“I don’t think you’ll particularly
care about our cargo,” said Alan.

TO THE STARS

115

“The way you are trying to buy it,
it will come too high.”

“You mean the fellows at the
port,” said the aide. “I suppose
you’ve been gone two or three years
and won’t realize that it’s criminal
to land. Forfeit all your cargo to
land. You’re calling to surrender,
of course.”

“I’m calling to give you five min-
utes to call off your pups,” said
Alan.

“Oh?”

“For if you don’t, you aren’t go-
ing to have a town.”

“Oh, really?” said the naval aide
with the smile aides manage in talk-
ing to inferiors.

“I hesitate to give you proof,”
said Alan. “It will cost you sev-
eral thousand citizens.”

“I assure you,” said the naval
aide, “that the relief of such a num-
ber of populace would be a god-
send.”

“Even if it includes yourself?”
“What a bluff. Well, I respect
you for it. Now if you want to sur-
render, we’ll give you safe conduct
out of the spaceport—”

“If you don’t surrender this town
to me in two minutes, you’re going
to get a full load, straight from our
bows !”

“Really-”

“Really! I withdraw the two
minutes. I’ll fire one burst and
be back. In ten bursts there’ll be
no St. Denniston.”

“Deeniston,” said the naval aide.

“I-”

Alan pulled the Deuce off the
switch. They unreeled the line into
the basement, braced themselves
against the wall nearest the drive a
quarter of a mile away and closed
the switch.

The ground rumbled.

Alan opened the switch.

They waited for a few seconds
and then, checking their suits, went
back to the first floor. One wall of
the house was blown i*i but the
phone worked.

“Command 1,” said Alan, point-
ing to the torn index page.

The girl was shaking, sticking to
her post but glancing back of her,
unable to concentrate fully.

“Command I—”

No pretty picture this time. The
girl put in her plug and collapsed
across the board.

The naval aide was still there bpt
the office had changed. Pictures
had fallen from the walls and there
was a fog of dust which, combined
with the smoke in the room where
Alan stood, made the image wavy.

Before the naval aide could speak
a towering man rushed in, falling
over the skirts of a golden robe.
He was shouting unintelligible
things.

“If that is Consoundalin,” said
Alan in lingua spacia, “tell him he’s
a hostage.” He held up the switch,
close to the screen so that the aide
could see it, so that Consoundalin
could see it. “When I press this
again, another blast begins. I don’t
know what you know of this but it’s
high drive. Another blast to an-

116

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

other quarter of town will double
your casualties. Do you surrender?”

There was a gibbering conference
interrupted by cross phone connec-
tions which screamed about dam-'
age.

“I guarantee your health,” said
Alan. “You and your boss, mister.
But if you don’t deliver yourselves
at the gates of the port in five min-
utes and if you don’t call off all hos-
tilities this instant, another blast
starts.”

Consoundalin pushed a purpling
face at his screen when he heard this
translated. Then, suddenly, he
sagged and reached for a switch to
connect him with his looting parties.

Alan left the Deuce with switch
in hand, sent Snoozer to recall his
party and, with a sporting weapon
lie had snatched from the ^walls of
the home, raced down the slope for
the spaceport.

XVIII.

The. smoke was clearing down.
There was no firing. But through
the thinning haze the Hound could
be seen. And there were strange
soldiers about her and a hole in her
midships where artillery had ranged
her.

Alan cared little for that. He was
looking wildly along the buildings
to find any remnant of the ship
party. Then in a street outside the
port he saw piles of uniformed
bodies, nearly a regiment, and saw
that they faced a thick-walled build-
ing which had been used as an op-

erations office when the port was
active.

He saw a group of men lying on
their arms, also facing the building,
and knew that at least some were
left alive inside. Knowing this he
ran back to the gate and arrived
there as a huge globular shape
skidded to a halt. Out of it
climbed the naval aide, three other
gentlemen and Consoundalin. Alan
wasted no time. •

Suddenly hot with anger, he ges-
tured that the vehicle be sent away,
and it went. Then he indicated that
he wanted all troops withdrawn
from the area and in a short time
the naval aide came hack to report
that they had gone. Alan saw them
marching up a street and he turned,
white lipped and shaking to Con-
soundalin.

“I don’t know how you came to
power or what devil’s society you
govern, but you are a disgrace to
mankind. Don’t bother translating
that,” said Alan to the aide. “Order
them to disrobe.”

There was protest at this hut not
for long. These men had just driven
through streets clogged with dead,
had plowed their way through
panicked mobs, had passed over the
ruin of buildings with their dying
still - inside.

Alan waved them to a wall. “You
are my hostages. If I get every-
thing I require here, you will be
restored and go free. If I do not,
you will die. That is simple. Car-
rying it out will be simpler yet.”
Consoundalin snarled something

117

TO THE STARS

and the naval aide said, "He says
you’re a demon. A moment before
you called we had the ship in there
under attack. It is not fair.* You
were not firing from your ship ! The
switchboard girl died and we had
no way to trace where you were.
What brimstone work is this?’’

“Something hotter than brim-
stone!” said Alan. He found him-
self aching to kill these men for the
damage they had done, for the peo-
ple they had shot down— and all for
the loot of a cargo. S witty came.

“Guard these people. Take them
into the ship and put irons on them
and post them before a lower port
where, night and day, they will be
visible to the curious who want to
know if they are still alive. I think
this king or whatever here lias in-
stilled terror enough in them that
they will fear to attack in case he.
goes free unscathed, for then his
vengeance would hit them.” He
turned to Bill the Eye, scratched
and bruised in resisting the ship at-
tackers. “You heard those orders.
Pass the word. These men are to
remain alive as our only hope.”

He was free then and he turned a
contemptuous back on his prisoners
and hastened to the operations
office.

He hailed it from a distance. Its
walls, resistant to take-off blasts, re-
mained silent. He came nearer,
keeping in plain sight, walking over
the mounded dead, kicking aside
strange, powerful weapons.

It was silent in the building, a
silence heightened by the. moaning

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

wounded in the street. Alan
thumped the door with his pistol
butt and it echoed hollowly within.

He waited, feeling the oppression
of the place as though he stood be-
fore a tomb. He tried the lock and,
then stood back to look at the struc-
ture. He walked quickly around it
ttnd to the back. There was a blank
wall here except for a single door.
It was ajar and Alan pushed at it.

The place was carnage.

The dead were racked along the
wall, each one at a post. The
wounded had dragged themselves to
the center of the room to die. And
before a window slit, through
which still pointed his outmoded
blaster lay Captain Jocelyn, his face
serene in death.

Alan took another lagging step
into the dimness and then saw what
obscured the bloodstained white of
Jocelvn’s clothes. It was another
who should never have been there,
who had come there well after the
last of the fight.

Mistress Luck lay dead across her
captain’s body, her small sharp
knife plunged deep into her heart.

XIX.

The ship rumbled with the en-
ergy of laboring men, townsmen
and crewmen. The high, shrill
crackle of torches blended with the
thud of hammers and the complaint
of heavily laden drills. A rack had
been improvised under the Deuce’s
direction, ancient storehouses and
plants had been ransacked for spares

and replacements. But little besides
weapons was new in this society.

He had not gone near Jocelyn’s
cabin. They had buried their cap-
tain that morning on a knoll, his
mistress and his dead beside him
where the stars could look down.
And the heavy sadness which had
pervaded the crew was jarred with
the ferocity of this work.

There had been no question about
Alan, no contest of any kind. Since
the moment they had known, every
remaining man, women and child in
the crew had given him every
courtesy, first because of their
soared respect for him, second be-
cause none could compare with him.
And so he went now, heavily, into
the cabins where once an admiral
had commanded in some far off and
forgotten day.

He was a little amazed to see a .
letter on the desk addressed to him.
It was notched into the corner of a
blotter and on it was scrawled, “Mr.
Corday, in event of my death.”

A chilly thing. It had been writ-
ten weeks and weeks before this re-
cent action according to its ship date.
It had been written while Jocelyn
still snarled at him and gave him
contempt.

He stood where he had often
stood under the captain’s wrath and
he opened it and read :

HOUND OF HEAVEN
Ship Year 55— 1025th watch.

Alan Corday

Sometime Noble and Surveyor-engineer
of sometime New Chicago.

My dear Alan :

I will not say a great deal about the

119

TO THE STARS

condition's under which you read this.
They are very much in the hands of God,
who grows, according to Dr. Strange,
nearer to me than 1 would care to have.
Suffice that you have now buried me and
come here to look at my effects. They
are yours, such as they are, a strange
hotchpotch of vanity and memory, all that
remains of Duard Henry Jocelyn, some-
time captain of the Solar Guards.

Alan, I have much which pleads your
forgiveness, beyond the much I have else-
where had to do. The day you came to
me in that saloon, I tricked you. I had to.
And even as I spoke to Hale my hand
signal said to him to take you at what-
ever cost. For in these many years of
ranging I had not seen my successor. I
picked you then.

And I broke you into an officer, Alan,
with means you will despise. I ask your
pardon now. A long while back, I ordered
Queen to propose a mutiny. That gave
you will to learn and profit by your thirst
for my blood. And I commanded Strange
to make you ill so that your watch count
would be lost. And I built your hope for
early return to Earth and kept you learn-
ing and watching how to make us come
back. And then, God forgive me now, I
broke your heart.

I know not what you felt, Alan, when
you went into your town with the hope of
ten years gone. But I can estimate your
feelings. You see, Alan, it was that way
1 began upon the long, long passage. And
my sweetheart was dead, dead a dozen
years before I came back. So I have
some inkling, had some even when I did
that terrible thing to you.

And you came back to the ship. Two
men were never out of your vicinity while
you were ashore. For you had long since
been appointed in my place by me. And
you learned. And I gave you contempt.

You had been withheld from the par-
ticular friendship of one or another in the
crew. I have caused it. Command can
have no friends. As you have come to this
moment, beside my desk, a lonely man
and in command.

Hale could not succeed me. Many

things he does not know. Show him the
accompanying note of authority and he
will obey you. Show this to the crew and
they, too, are at your command. But I
have no idea that you will need it. They
think much more of you than you suspect,
Alan. It was my policy to make you be-
lieve they did not.

And now you have command. And
what you will do with it is your concern.
But permit me to tell you an answer to a
question you have asked, asked many
times, Alan. You want to know why?

You have been in many actions on
many strange planets. You have seen
strange things. And you have watched
our Earth ebb and flow.

Earth will not live forever. And, un-
less he is helped, neither will man.

We could land on some fertile planet
and take our ease, put aside the risks of
travel, make ourselves comfortable and at
home. But this ship must be our home
and this task must be ours as it is the
task of many another ship on the long
passage.

You have seen sentient races living on
our technologies or inventing their own.
Do you want them to outlast our breed?
Do you want those other species to inherit
at last our Universe? I think not, Alan.
I thiidqyou will go on.

This is the crusade of the long passage,
a lonely and unthanked crusade.

Man shall triumph at last amongst the
stars.

Man, not Achnoids, not Gleenites, not
crawling things, can and must survive.

This ship and her sisters in the stars
and on the passage are, without the slight-
est help from Earth, the only means which
shall cause man to survive as a race and
triumph everywhere.

Do not curse equations. Someday man
will conquer Time. Until he does, Alan,
you and men like you and ships like the
Hound will bless those equations which
let us go at al land with such swiftness
carry on the race, the triumphs, the hope
of Man.

I wish you luck in your command and
luck amongst the stars, the loyalty of our

120

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

crew and the friendship of our colonies
which we so strangely serve. And perhaps
someday, if the priests are right, I can
shake your hand, Alan, and hear from you
the job you did.

God bless you.

Good luck.

I trust you. And all I had and hoped
for, all are yours.

Jocelyn

Alan put it gently down and for
a long while stood oblivious of the
ship, his mind ranged back across
the bridge of years. And then he
turned and quickly walked out upon
the bridge. His sight was queerly
misted and it took him a little time
to see the repairs in progress there.

Then he began to inspect them
and gradually to put to rights the
ship and the day.

In the afternoon there came a
number of learned gentlemen and he
gave them coldness. A reporter was
with them and took down many
notes so that he could publish the
advantages of treating well the long
passage ships.

And Alan grew cunning and told
them that in the stars and amongst
the colonies there were many weap-
ons and that long passage ship, com-
ing home even after the lapse of
centuries still could lay low this
society. And he told them of a
means of communication in the long
passage which did not exist and
said he had already sent the word
to other ships to be wary. And,
who knew ? It might help the next.

And he went into town at dusk

and looked at it and found books
published after their last time on
Earth. He went to a stew and he
spread talk there about riches and
the fabulous spaceman’s life which
was all gain and no work whatever.
And he stood aloof while his crew
iifveigled men and women into sign-
ing through the night and he
shipped, on the morrow, with his
newspaper story out, five hundred
colonists and all necessary equip-
ment, shipped them for an “unculti-
vated. island on Venus where food
springs up from the ground over-
night”.

And all that day and the next he
haggled for stores and books and
goods, holding aloof, paying for
what he got in the cargo they had
brought, making it most interesting-
ly wealthy for merchants to deal
with a long passage ship and insinu-
ating that trade was no monopoly of
their monarch but the right of free-
born citizens of the merchant class.

And then the ship was loaded, all
repairs were made and they were
done.

XX.

Alan stood on the bridge. A mili-
tary officer was bowing his way out.
“You will land them from the life-
boat, then, Captain Corday.”

Coldly, Alan looked at him. The
man was oily. No wonder he had
come so high in a debauched court.
No wonder he could exist in a

TO THE STARS

121

society where, as Alan had seen on
the day before, human meat hung
in shops for sale.

“I generally keep my word,” said
Alan. ‘‘It would not pay just now
to break it. They will be landed as
and when I have said.”

“Thank you, oh thank you, Cap-
tain Corday.” And the man was
gone.

A young engineer of the port had
come into the bridge to give the in-
struments a last check. Alan had
seen him before, a well-educated,
alert young man who knew his job.
Alan watched him. He was think-
ing of old Hale and the rest ornthe
ridge up there, a ridge bathed in
sunlight today.

There was a quiver of expectancy
in the ship. The word had been
passed. People were coming to .
their stations for take-off— short-
handed just now with the new crew-
men so untrained. What would
those crewmen think, some of them,
who did not know about the long
passage and its Time?

The engineer finished with the
new detecting equipment and turned
to make an adjustment on the drive
communicator.

Swifty came up on the bridge to
t^ke station. He had a bottle in his
ha'nd and he put it down on the cus-
tomary ledge. He was only slightly
drunk. Other crewmen were here
on station already, alertly watching
their captain.

“Mr. Roston,” said Alan coolly.

Swifty looked up in surprise. It

had been years since he had heard
his real name.

“Mr. Roston,” said Alan, “I have
today shipped a new atmosphere
pilot and taken into the lock a new
plane.”

Swifty had not known this. He
stared, startled, uncertain.

“A long time ago,” said Alan,
“you were in a war. You were very
young. You have grown older. I
think it is time you forgot that war,
Mr. Roston.” He walked to the
ledge and picked up the new bottle.
He turned and threw it butt first
against the bulkhead. The loud
crash of it froze the bridge.

“Take your post, Mr. Roston,”
said Alan. “From this moment for-
ward you are first mate of this ves-
sel. You know your duties. Per-
form them. Ts^that clear?”

The voting engineer from the port
was staring ah the shattered glass
which had so barely missed a com-
municator panel. He had finished
with his adjustment and now he
saw how near was the ship to leav-
ing and approached the ladder.

“A' moment there,” said Alan.
The engineer turned. “Do you know
of the long passage?”

“Good lord, sir,” said the en-
gineer, “I have a good job where I
am.”

“The long passage pays better,”
said Alan.

“And has a great deal wrong with
its Time Equations,” said the en-
gineer. “Only a madman would at-
tempt such a thing as a volunteer.

122

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Thank you for the offer. But I have
fesponsibilities here.”

Alan looked at him appraisingly.
He motion with his hand to the
quartermaster. “Take that man into
custody and hold him in sick bay
until we have cleared Earth.”

The engineer’s face hardened as
he looked into the pale, tired fea-
tures of Alan Corday. He rushed
and the spacemen present -sought to
block him. But he got through.

Alan brought his pistol butt down
smartly on the engineer’s skull. He
dropped, breathing hard, still half-
conscious. He struggled half up.

“But you can’t . . . you can’t . . .
my wife—”

They took him below.

“All stations report ready,” said
Alan. And waited.

“Ready, sir,” said Irma.

“You will take-off and set a course
for Johnny’s Landing, Mr. Roston.
You will set the proper watches
and find a proper relief for yourself
amongst our original crew. Under-
stood?”

Mr. Roston drew himself up
smartly, a piece of shattered bottle
ground under his heel. “Aye, aye,
captain.” He faced about and be-
gan to snap the necessary orders.

The low drives, trembled. The
ship began to lift. The prisoners
went into the lifeboat and, at ninety
miles altitude, were shoved away.

Alan walked slowly into his cabin.
His own pitiful collection of gear

was there in the otherwise empty
drawers and lockers, tie sat down
in the chair before the desk, looking
at nothing.

A phrase was ringing in his ears:
“You can’t . . . my wife—” And he
saw again a night when it had
rained and heard again a weirdly
beautiful concerto played on a piano
in a stew.

His head ached brutally and his
nerves were taut. He looked at the
desk. A bottle of brandy was there
and a sheaf of small packets, just as
Jocelyn had left them. Corday
poured a drink and then, with a sud-
den, savage motion emptied into it
the contents of a paper. He drank
it down.

Behind them a city had dropped
from sight, a city overlooked by a
knoll, a city which had paid a ter-
rible price for treachery.

The drink and drug began to take
effect. Alan felt somebody near him
and he turned. Snoozet; stood at
the door, face calm, waiting. She
wore a pleasant dress and a new
bracelet on her arm. She was no
longer fourteen. She was a woman
grown, a lovely woman as Alan sud-
denly saw. He looked at her and
wondered- that he had not seen
before.

The Countess entered the room
and closed the door.

And high into the black, black
void the Hound of Heaven sped,
upward bound and outward bound
on a mission to the ageless stars.

THE END

TO THE STARS

123

OUR

TURBULENT

ATMOSPHERE

BY WILLY LEY

First of two articles. Barely twenty- five miles up was
the , limit of observation until the rockets were built —
but the basic science of planetary atmospheres, even more
than that of weather, live above one hundred miles!

Like many other people I occa-
sionally experience some trouble in
keeping Anaximander, Anaximenes
and Anaxagoras neatly separated in
my mind. I knew that one of th(e
three had been the first to explain
wind ' as “a flowing— river— in the
air” but I was not sure which one.
Upon looking it up it turned out to
have been Anaximander, while
Anaximenes had stated that “air is
almost bodiless and must be with-
out limit” and also, that “just like
our soul, which consists of air, holds
our bodies together, so air sur-

rounds all the world.” -And the
third of that trio of similar names,
Anaxagoras, had claimed that “air
and ether originate from the mass
that surrounds them and this is un-
limited in extent.”

These remarks reveal the first
model of the atmosphere, if you
want to call it that. It was a very
simple model, wherever the soil or
the water stopped, the atmosphere
began and continued to infinity.
Weather was caused by the inter-
action of air and water, prompted
by the sun. And while attempts at

124

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

understanding the nature of these
interactions failed, a number of
“signs” were collected which were
believed to indicate the next day’s
weather. Some of them were even
valid, if only for the area where
they were observed.

A few centuries later Aristotle,
when putting all this information
together, constructed the second
model of the atmospheie. It was a
curiously prophetic model, even
though it was based on entirely er-
roneous assumptions. In Aristotle’s
model, too, the atmosphere extended
from the soil to the fiery heavens.
But it was no longer uniform as
seems to have been silently assumed
by the earlier philosophers. It was
divided into three layers. The bot-
tom layer in which plants, animals
and people lived, was immovable as
the earth itself, not counting these
local currents which caused the
weather. In temperature it was
variable. The top layer, touching
the heavens, moved with them
around the earth and it was also in-
tensely -hot. The intermediate layer
between the two did not move and
was extremely cold— Aristotle knew
mountainous regions and the tem-
perature on mountain tops and may
have thought that the higher moun-
tains approached this middle layer.

After Aristotle there was little in-
terest in the atmosphere among the
“philosophers”, the educated classes
in our terminology, and what
weather knowledge had been gath-
ered slipped back into weather lore,
becoming largely superstitious in

OUR TURBULENT ATMOSPHERE

the process. We must remember
that the interest in weather and
weather phenomena is directly de-
pendent upon the activities of the
people concerned. The nomadic
herder shows the lowest interest, if
he and his sheep are drenched in a
sudden storm, oh well, some god
showed displeasure with something
or somebody. And it did not mat-
ter much. The nomad’s interest is
confined to seasonal changes, pro-
vided that he lives in an area where
seasonal changes are pronounced.

The non-nomadic planter of crops
is greatly concerned about both, sea-
sonal variations and day-by-day
changes. But his concern is strictly
localized, he is interested in what
the weather will he in his locality
tomorrow and the week after. The
sailor, on the other hand, is not too
deeply concerned about the weather
in the place where he is, but would
like to know what it will be at his
distant port of arrival three weeks
from now. But what really inter-
ests him is the weather in the in-
tervening area during the interven-
ing time. It is not surprising, there-
fore, that sailors had the largest
amount of weather lore, plain and
fancy, and that the sailor’s weather
lore differed from that of the peas-
ant. It is also not surprising that
the first really useful and compre-
hensive weather notes were syste-
matically taken and collected by a
sailor, the English “buccaneer” Wil-
liam Dampier.

That William Dampier was born
in 1652, just nine years after Torri-

125

celli, a pupil of Galileo Galilei, in-
vented the barometer, thus making
the first step beyond Aristotle’s col-
lection of “signs” and observations,
a time interval of just precisely two
thousand years,

But during the time interval a
third model of the atmosphere was
hinted at by a learned Arab, prob-
ably the astronomer al-Biruni who
died in 1048. The Arabs had taken
Aristotle’s works and become ac-
quainted with the Greek conception
of the earth as a sphere freely Abat-
ing in space. On their own they
had developed the idea that the stars
must he distant suns and al-Far-
ghani— called Alfraganus with a lat-
inized version of his name— had
stated quite plainly that even the
smallest stars, those of the sixth
magnitude, must be still larger than
the earth itself. This suggested that
our atmosphere might not reach all
the way to the sun and to the stars.
Since the Arabs also knew a good
deal about refiection' and refraction,
either al-Biruni or one of his con-
temporaries tried to calculate the
height of the atmosphere from the
duration of twilight. The result
was a figure corresponding to fifty-
seven miles or about ninety-two
kilometers. We now know that our
atmosphere extends higher than
that, but beyond a hundred kilo-
meters it no longer has optical prop-
erties which could be detected with-
out instruments.

Atmosphere model No. 3 was not
very distinct in detail— or, more like-

126

ly, the full description was not pre-
served— but it was the first with an
upper limit. Some five centuries
later the newly invented “Torricel-
lian tube”— the name “barometer”
was employed for the first time by
Boyle— hinted at the same thing.
The vacuum which had been so hot-
ly denied by Aristotle did seem pos-
sible after all and after climbing a
few church steeples a Frenchman
by the name of Perier carried the
new instrument up the Puy-de-
Dome, a mountain in the Auvergne,
to prove that there was less air
pressure on top of the mountain.
Incidentally, the mountain in ques-
tion falls short of a mile by about
six hundred feet. During the fol-
lowing decades there were many
such mountain top expeditions, Pas-
cal and Boyle produced theories
about gas pressure, the actual exist-
ence of a near-vacuum was demon-
strated experimentally by Otto von
Guericke and the time was ripe for
Atmosphere Model No. 4.

Its designer is well known by
name, not because of his model of
the atmosphere but because he de-
nied Aristotle’s notion that comets
were atmospheric phenomena.

“Of all the comets in the sky
There’s none like Comet Halley
We see it with the naked eye
And periodi-cally.

The first to see it was not he
But yet we call it Halley
The notion that it would return
Was his, origi-nally.”

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Dr. Edmond Halley was a man
of many accomplishments. He read
and used Latin, Greek and Hebrew
and when his attention was called to
a few presumably valuable Arabic
manuscripts he learned and mas-
tered Arabic in order to translate
them. On the occasion of an ex-
pedition to Newfoundland the Navy
lieutenant who had been- assigned to
him as a navigator, spoke insult-
ingly behind Halley’s hack about the
shortcomings of. philosophers in
general and of the ship’s master in
particular. When he repeated the
remarks to Halley’s face Halley had
him confined to his cabin and sailed
the ship back to England by him-
self. There, he prodded Newton
into the writing of the “Principia,”
read all the proofs of the book, made
most of the drawings and paid the
expenses of publication. But Halley
was at his best when it came to put-
ting apparently unrelated facts to-
gether and drawing a conclusion
from them, as in the case of the
comet. In the case of our atmos-
phere Halley concluded from what
facts he had that the atmosphere
must have an upper limit and that it
consists of three distinct layers. The
limit he placed at forty-five miles.
The bottom layer extended from sea
level to nine miles and was charac-
terized by a steady drop in tempera-
ture as one ascended in it. The
second layer extended from nine to
eighteen miles and was character-
ized by constant— and very low-
temperature throughout. From
eighteen to forty-five miles the tem-

OUR TURBULENT ATMOSPHERE

perature was supposed to fall off
some more, gradually and steadily.
Except for the fact that the figures
are too small, Halley’s model is still
valid in most respects.

His definite assertion about the
atmosphere’s upper limit must have
spread widely and rapidly, presum-
ably more through intermediaries
than by direct translation. There is
a very interesting passage in a long
Latin poem, written in 1767 by one
Bernardo Zamagna of Ragusa and
published in Rome one year later.
Its title is “Navis Aeria” and it is a
description of an imaginary voyage
round the world in ( a balloon— the
actual invention of the balloon took
place sixteen years later.

“Do not, however,” the passage
reads, “be lured to ascend too high
nor aim by your ambitious flight
to surmount the highest peaks of
Atlas and Rhodope or the summit
of towering Olympus, whose gleam-
ing crest rises above the clouds.
There the air has no density and an
atmosphere which our race cannot
breathe clothes the places far re-
moved from earth ; the higher it
mounts toward the stars from the
land below, the rarer, of course, it
becomes and at a very lofty point
seems to disappear altogether into
nothingness.” That was a far cry
from the concept of Bishop Francis
Godwin who only a century earlier
had told that the “ordinary air”
reached to the clouds and that the
air above the clouds— and all the
way to the moon— was so marvel-
ously clear and clean and pure that

127

a traveler had neither the desire nor
the need for food and drink.

During the short interval between
Zaniagna’s poem and the actual in-
vention of the balloon, one of the
earlv chemists, Karl Wilhelm
Scheele, had discovered that the air
was a mixture of two gases and not
a compound. Some nine years after
Scheele, in 1781, Henry Cavendish
published the result of numerous
analyses: the air consisted of 79.17
percent— by volume— of nitrogen and
20.83 percent of oxygen. Four
years later Cavendish found a
strange discrepancy : a small bubble
of gas was always left over when he
forced all the oxygen and the nitro-
gen into chemical compounds which
were not gaseous themselves. That
was actually the discovery of argon,
but since argon is chemically inert,
Cavendish had no way of attacking
or even identifying it. The whole
problem was simply forgotten for
more than a century, actually until
1894 when Lord Rayleigh noticed
the strange fact that atmospheric ni-
trogen showed a density of 1.2572
while nitrogen gas prepared from
chemicals had a density of only
1.2511. Logically there had to be
something in atmospheric nitrogen
which did not enter into the com-
pounds of nitrogen. As impurities
go it was rather massive, more than
one percent of the nitrogen and al-
most one percent of the atmosphere
taken as a whole. Lord Rayleigh
and Sir William Ramsay found to

128

their surprise that it was a really
inert gas, not just comparatively in-
ert like nitrogen or carbondioxide.
Remembering the Greek word for
“lazy”, namely argos, they called it
argon. But the chemical investiga-
tion of the atmosphere is a later
chapter which had to wait for two
research tools yet to be invented in
Cavendish’s day: the spectroscope,
which would detect and identify
chemically inert substances ; and the
liquid air machine, which would re-
duce the atmospheric fluff to palpa-
ble liquids that could be handled and
fractionated.

However, that early chemical at-
tack on the various “airs”— gases—
made by Scheele, Cavendish and
others had led to the discovery of
hydrogen and to the invention of the
hydrogen balloon. The ho* air bal-
loon had preceded it by a month or
so, but the hydrogen balloon could
carry more and was more practical
all around. The new research tool
of the balloon replaced mountain
ascents. It was much easier and
faster for reaching the same altitude
as could be reached by the labori-
ous climb of nearby or not so nearby
mountains. In fact it carried much
higher than any mountain top in
Europe. As early as 1804 Gay-
Lussac reached an altitude of 7,016
meters,* not quite attaining the

♦Since all measurements In meteorological work
and high alttiude research are now expressed In
metric units I'll stick to the metric system from
now on. For those who are not used to it: 1,000
meters are 1 kilometer, which is the same as
0,281 feet, while 5 miles are almost precisely 8
kilometers.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

7,400 meters claimed by Robertson
and Loest one year earlier. In
retrospect one can only be surprised
that these men survived their ex-
periences, one should think that they
would either have died of anoxia or
frozen to death. In fact both came
very nearly true. Regarded purely
as altitude records these two flights
remained unbroken for a long time.
I have before me a list of such as-
cents prepared by a French his-
torian of aviation and according to
that list it was not until 1850 that
even Gay-Lussac’s record was
broken. In that year Barral and
Bixio ascended to 7,040 meters, but
the difference is so small, especially
for such an altitude, that it could
be more than accounted for by a
tiny error of instrument calibration.
The record was certainly broken in
1862 by Coxwell and Glaisher whose
instruments claimed 8,800 meters.
In 1894 Berson succeeded in as-
cending beyond the 9,000 meter
mark— his instruments read 9,150
meters— and the same Berson, flying
with Siiring, reached 10,800 meters
in 1901. This was probably the
highest flight in an open gondola
from which the aeronaut returned
alive to tell the tale, it required the
air-tight gondola of the modern
stratosphere balloon to go beyond
11,000 meters with relative safety.

All these high-altitude flights had
been strictly scientific in purpose,
the gondolas of the balloons were
cluttered with barometers and ther-
mometers, containers for taking air

OUR TURBULENT ATMOSPHERE

samples, magnetic needles with vari-
ous type’s of suspension for obtain-
ing an indication of the earth’s mag-
netic field, et cetera, et cetera. Some
of these instruments were already
of the- type that did not have , to be
read any more by the aeronaut and
they were even then miscalled “self-
recording instruments” which is, of
course, nonsense since the instru-
ment does not record “itself”, but its
findings. The findings agreed nicely
with each other. The composition
of th'e air did not seem to vary no-
ticeably between sea level and peak
altitude. The drop in air pressure
agreed with a formula which had
been evolved and temperature fell
off at a steady rate just as Dr f Hal-
ley had predicted. By, say 1890,
the rate had been established too,
Englishmen said that it w'as, on the
average, one degree Fahrenheit for
every three hundred feet of ascent.
Frenchmen and Germans said that
it was six degrees centigrade per
kilometer— both mean the same
thing. In addition to the observa-
tions from balloon flights a good
deal of material from incidental ob-
servations of spdntaneous phenome-
na had accumulated.

Scientists living in the Scandi-
navian countries had tried to meas-
ure the height of the aurora by tri-
angulation. It is an undertaking
which is more difficult by far than
one may think at first glance. But
they persevered and amassed fig-
ures the lowest of w r hich reach
around eighty kilometers, the high-
est— with considerable uncertainty—

129

about five hundred kilometers. Of
course nobody was quite sure then
just what an aurora was, guesses
ranged from electrical discharges to
“a reflection of the reflection of sun-
light, or even moonlight, on arctic
. snowfiekls”. But no matter what
the guess, the very existence of the
aurora proved that there was still
something in those altitudes. And
then there were the shooting stars.
Aristotle had held that they were
purely atmospheric phenomena— the
annoying similarity of terms like
“meterology”, “meteoric” and “rne-
teoritic” actually dates back to that
assertion— but every once in a while
somebody who did not worry about
ridicule had wondered whether
there might not be an astronomical
reason for them. The fight was de-
cided in favor of astronomical origin
in the course of the first decades of
the nineteenth century, but it was
still true that the visible part- of the
phenomenon took place in the at-
mosphere. Professors Benzenberg
and Braudes of Gottingen decided in
H798 to measure the height of shoot-
ing stars.

Now this was a fine and progres-
sive resolution, but it was hard to
carry out. While one can see a few
shooting stars on almost any night
they do not always appear where
you happen to look at that instant.
And with two observers at some dis-
tance from each other— in pre-tele-
phone and even pre-telegraph days
—the chances dropped sharply. In
short Benzenberg and Brandes were
not too successful, but as more and

130

more astronomers began to pay at-
tention to the idea some useful
chance observations were obtained.
How much chance was involved,
even after the introduction of pho-
tography, can be seen from the tally
of Professor Max Wolf of Heidel-
berg: the total of the plates he had
exposed between 1890 and 1902
amounted to six hundred twenty-
five hours and thirty minutes of ob-
servation, between them the plates
showed nineteen trails of shooting
stars. Still, by 1900 astronomers
knew that shooting stars usually be-
come visible when they are between
one hundred fifty and one hundred
eighty kilometers high and that they
disappear between "eighty and one
hundred kilometers. Of course the
big ones will reach all the way to
the ground.

And in August, 1883, the^ island
of Krakatoa in the Sunda Sea ex-
ploded. That island had three vol-
canoes, Mount Perboewatan, Mount
Danan and Mount Rakata. Mount
Perboewatan had started erupting
in May 1883, Mount Danan joined
it in June and Mount Rakata on
Sunday, August 26, 1883. After
roaring, beginning at 1 :00 p. m.
local time, all afternoon and all
through the night the volcano blew
up at 10:05 a. m. Monday morning,
obliterating the two other volcanoes
and half of ■*the island. The im-
portant point for our theme here is
that an estimated cubic mile of
steam, carbon dioxide, lava, ashes
and soil were thrown into the air.
Some of this material formed “noc-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

tilucent clouds” which persisted for
a long time and' could be triangu-
lated accurately and leisurely. Alti-
tude eighty kilometers. The high-
est other clouds are the so-called
mother-of-pearl clouds, forming at
an altitude of about twenty „ kilo-
meters. They are now believed to
consist of ice crystals.

During those high altitude bal-
loon flights of the nineteenth cen-
tury there had been one which ended
as a tragedy— as it turned out later
it was just this tragedy which was
to influence future research more
than any successful flight had done.
In 1874 two scientists, Sivel and
Croce-Spinelli had made a flight
which carried them to 7,400 meters.
During the following year fhey tried
again, the name of their balloon was
Zenith and Gaston Tissandier joined
them in the gondola. They attained
an altitude of 8,840 meters, just
about the same as that of Mount
Everest. But w'hen the Zenith
landed, only Tissandier was still
alive, he had just narrowly escaped
and is said to have been sickly for
the remainder of his life. It was
this ill-fated flight of the Zenith
which caused meteorologists to do
some fundamental thinking. The
purpose of such flights was to ob-
tain information about conditions at
high altitudes. But that information
was not obtained by the aeronauts
themselves, it was obtained by in-
struments. Some of these instru-
ments did not even have to be read
but recorded their findings. So

OUR TURBULENT ATMOSPHERE

why endanger human lives? Why
not send up unmanned balloons car-
rying instruments only?

A man by the name of Brissonet
made this suggestion for the first
time— in 1879— and others took it
up, pointing out that all the instru-
ments one would probably use
would still weigh less than a single
aeronaut dressed in three fur coats,
fur gloves, felt boots, et cetera.
Therefore such unmanned balloons
would rise higher. And they could
also be much smaller and cheaper.
In addition to all the men who
wrote about this idea and talked
about it there were a few which ac-
tually went to work, Gustave Her-
mite and Georges Besancoru in
France, and Professor Assmann and
his assistants in Germany. Hermite
and Besanqon began by making
their own balloons of oiled paper and
by buying commercial instruments
which they stripped of all excess
weight. Later on they said that
they had approached the problem
as scientists but found that they had
to become apprentice mechanics and
could not reappear as scientists un-
til after they had grown into full-
fledged instrument makers. Their
first successful ballon sonde as-
cended on March 21, 1893 near
Paris and rose to fifteen kilometers.
Assmann and his men either daw-
dled a bit or were too thorough, they
were not ready until April 27, 1894.
But their balloon rose to twenty-one
point eight kilometers. Many more
followed very quickly, none going
much higher for a number of years,

AST— 6S 131

but each qne contributing more and
more information.

And based on 'this material the
next model of the atmosphere was
designed in 1898 by the French me-
teorologist Leon P. Teisserenc de
Bort. Both he and Assmann had
noticed that Halley’s prediction of
a constant temperature for a certain
height, or rather from a certain
height on, held actually true. In his
book on meteorology Teisserenc de
Bort used and advocated a two-
layer atmosphere. The lower layer
he proposed to name troposphere—
using a Greek word which means
“to turn”, but used here more in
the sense of “to churn”— and all
true meteorological phenomena, all
“weather”, was supposed to take
place in that layer. Since vertical
currents would be absent in the up-
per layer the air in it' would be
stratified, hence the name strato-
sphere was proposed for it. The
dividing shell between the two lay-
ers was to be called tropopause.
The temperature of the stratosphere
was established as being —55° C.
(-67° F.)

It was already suspected at that
time, and was fully confirmed in the
years to follow, that the height of
the tropopause depended on geo-
graphical latitude. There are sea-
sonal variations too, but the figures
usually given are : 6 kilometers over
the poles, eleven kilometers at Lati-
tude 50°— the latitude of Le Havre,
Prague and Kiev in Europe, and of
Vancouver Island and Winnipeg on
this side of the Atlantic— and eighteen

kilometers over the equator.

Most of the two' decades that fol-
lowed after Teisserenc de Bort’s
publication were devoted to a pa-
tient filling in of detail into the pic-
ture which he and others had out-
lined. No major revolution was in
sight— it would have needed some-
thing approaching omniscience to
realize that Marconi’s wireless, Lee
de Forest’s radio tube, Dr. Mach’s
researches on speed of sound, et
cetera, the beginnings of scientific
rocket theory and even the mass-
production of machine guns all pre-
saged revolutions of the sciences
which are concerned with the at-
mosphere. That Sir William Ram-

MODEL 1925

% by Volume

The distribution of atmospheric gases as-
sumed in 1925 was necessarily based on
theory and calculation. No observations
above 30km. had been obtained.

132

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

say in England had followed up
Lord Rayleigh’s discovery of argon
by discovering helium, neon, xenon
and krypton was interesting, espe-
cially in the case of helium because
this gas was known since 1868 spec-
troscopically as occurring in the
sun. On earth it remained hidden
until 1894. But this was a filling
in of detail, too. That aviation pro-
gressed nicely was a help, almost
every flight could be combined with
research.

For the sake of the aviators a set
of tables of atmospheric properties
in different altitudes was drawn up,
it was useful to meteorologists, too.
Although no aviator ever went to
twenty kilometers the tables usually
ended up with that figure since the
material was available. Here’s a
slightly later version of these tables,
from NACA Report No. 218, which,
it may be remarked, is still valid
and useful. The column “speed of
sound’’ is, of course, a later addition,
nobody thought that important in

1925 when NACA Report No. 218
was printed for the first time. Now
it is, as everybody knows, im-
portant for establishing the Mach
number, which is defined as the
ratio of the true air speed of a plane,
bomb, shell or missile to the speed
of sound. If we call the airplane
speed v and the speed of sound c,
the definition looks like this :

M = v/c .

As a glance at the table shows, c
varies with altitude and since v is
likely to vary with altitude too, the
Mach number M cannot be a con-
stant value for a given plane or mis-
sile. That is known to most people
interested in flying by now, but the
vast majority of the people who
know it believe that that has to do
with the density of the air. The
same glance at the table could have
shown that this is not the case and
in order to demolish the error let’s
define c in turn. To do it “from the
bottom up” would require an extra
page, so I’ll proceed at once to the

TABLE I.

The Atmosphere from Sea Level to 20 kilometers, according to NACA Report No. 218, with speed
of sound added.

Height

Temperature

Pressure

Weight

Speed of sound

km

°c

"K

mm of Hg.

kg /mil

in m/sec.

0

+ 15.0

288.0

760.00

1.2255

341

1

+ 8.5

280.5

674.09

1.1120

338

2

+ 2.0

275.0

596.23

1 .0068

334

3

- 4.5

268.5

525.79

.9094

329

4

— 11.0

262.0

462.26

.8193

326

5

-17.5

255.5

405.09

.7363

321

6

-24.0

249.0

353.77

.6598

317

7

-30.5

242.5

307.87

.5896

313

8

-37.0

236.0

266.89

.5252

308

9

-43.5

229.5

230.45

.4664

305

10

-50.0

223.0

198.16

.4127

301

15

-55.0

218.0

90.65

.1931

296

20

-55.0

218.0

41.41

.0883

296

OUR TURBULENT ATMOSPHERE 133

final formula which reads
c 2 = kRT

where k is the ratio of the specific
heats at constant pressure and con-
stant volume— just remember that
the standard for k is 1.4 if you speak
of atmospheric air— R is the gas con-
stant and T the absolute tempera-
ture. All of which works out to
M 2 = v 2 /c 2 = v 2 /kRT
which demonstrates that the Mach
number actually depends on the
temperature. We’ll find out later
at . what point that concept has to be
demolished too.

Before proceeding to the next ,
Atmosphere Model— I’m beginning
to grow hesitant about consecutive
numbers at that point— let’s get rid
of a few necessary figures that
should be - mentioned. First, the
chemical composition of the atmos-
phere, more or less within the con-
fines of sea level to twenty kilome-
ters. In drv air, at an intermediate
latitude, and more than fifty miles
from the nearest chemical factory,
we have the following :

Nitrogen 78.09 vol. percent

Oxygen 20.95

Argon 0.93

C0 2 0.03

Neon 0.0018 ' ‘‘

Krypton 0.0001

Helium 0.0005

Xenon 0.000008 “ "

Hydrogen, less than 0.001 u Sa

Near the ground you can find a
trace of radon, produced by radio-
active decay. It never gets high,
because it is a very heavy gas to be-
gin with and decays to a lower

atomic number before convection
currents can carry it up. Converse-
ly, spectroscopic studies have shown
that there is slightly more than one
part in a million of CH 4 — methane
—in a higher layer, tentatively put
at eight kilometers. Similarly there
are traces of N 2 0 in the atmosphere
and at a rather high altitude a fairly
substantial amount of ozone, jibout
as much as helium, but concentrated
in a specific layer. Then there are
strict impurities in the air, solid
motes, about 100,000 per cubic
centimeter in city air but only four
hundred or so in the air over the
high seas, far from land.

And then there is water vapor,
the “humidity” of hot summer days.
If our atmosphere were ever com-
pletely dry it would weigh 5x10’ 5
tons— a 5 followed by 15 zeros— in-
cluding the water vapor it weighs
5.9 x 10 1B tons. Since air of a tem-
perature of less than minus 40°— C
or F— has no measurable moisture
content any more, all that vapor has
to be below nine kilometers. Inci-
dentally, half of all the mass of the
atmosphere is below five point six
kilometers. And if sea level pres-
sure prevailed throughout the at-
mosphere it would be 7,995 meters
high, the so-called “ballistic atmos-
phere” which could actually be used
for ballistic calculations in the good
old days. They neglected the curva-
ture of the earth’s surface too and
still got usable results.

Most of the things just recited
were nicely put on paper at the time

134

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

of tlie first World War, with very
similar figures. Meteorologists op-
erated glibly if not always success-
fully with Highs and Lows, cyclones
and anti-cvclones, isobars and iso-
therms and the force resulting from
the earth’s rotation. Then came the
war and because machine guns had
been mass-produced in the mean-
time the war settled down to fixed
front lines and became a long war.
The subsequent changes can all be
traced to that one factor. I don’t
say that they wouldn’t have come
about anyway in the long run, but
the way things actually happened
they are all traceable to the long
duration of the first World War.

Because of the war there occurred
big explosions, not just gun fire and
shells but the kind that resulted if
somebody succeeded in blowing up
somebody else’s ammunition dump.
What had been noticed occasionally
before when a volcano put on a ma-
jor performance now became a phe-
nomenon for which one could wait :
the “zone of silence”. An ammuni-
tion dump blew up, everybody could
hear it within a radius of ten or
fifteen kilometers. To those at a
distance of twenty kilometers the
explosion was too far away to be
audible. But at thirty kilometers it
was audible again. Apparently
something in the air reflected the
sound waves to the ground again.

Because of the war communica-
tions, still mostly carried by cable,
were severed— often literally— and
“wireless” was pushed. It could be
done and suddenly an engineer real-

OUR TURBULENT ATMOSPHERE

ized that he had contact with an-
other station far below the horizon.
How could that be since radio
waves were supposed to travel in
straight lines ? Presumably there
was also a layer in the air which re-
flected radio waves. Strangely
enough it worked better during the
night. And sometimes, or so it
seemed, the waves were apparently
absorbed instead of reflected.

Because of the fixed frontlines,
battleships were robbed of their big
rifles which were mounted on rail-
road carriages and used for long
range ground-to-ground work. While
engaged in this, the artillerymen
were reminded of the fact that the
direction of the wind on the ground
was not necessarily the same as the
direction of the wind at three kilo-
meters. That was in itself not new,
but had not been thought of in this
corinection. The answer was very
simple. A small unmanned balloon
was released prior to firing and ob-
served telescopically, it told the di-
rection of the wind and gave an
indication of its velocity. But what
happened if you had a nice solid
cloud layer at one kilometer? Offi-
cers of the United States Signal
Corps had a fine idea. Small trans-
mitters were already available— for
airplanes— and they suspended such
transmitters from their balloons,
hoping to trace their path in spite of
low-hanging clouds. It did not
work as expected at first, but the
idea was filed away for reference
“after the war”.

And because of the war neutral

135

Norway was in a nasty position.
Norway had a large merchant ma-
rine and depended for much of its
food on its fishing fleet. Both
needed weather forecasts and needed
them badly. But the weather of the
belligerents was a military secret
and the Chief Forecaster at Oslo-
then still Christiania— had nothing
to work with. The result was that
he and his colleagues sat down and
began to think, just what did these
Highs and Lows, et cetera, et cetera,
signify? Well, supposing a cold
river of air came down from the
North. It was cold and therefore
dry. It met a warm river of air
from the South which was warm
and could, therefore, hold a con-
siderable amount of moisture. But
where it met the cold river it was
cooled off, could not hold its mois-
ture any more. Then there occurred
"precipitation”. During the first
World War, because of the war,
they invented air-mass theory in
Norway and because of its wartime
origin it still bristles with terms like
"stationary front”, "advancing warm
front” and “breakthrough”.

Just before the war, a German,
Professor Alfred Wegener, had in-
dulged in some pure theory. Teis-
serenc de Bort had said, and every
day proved it anew, that the tropo-
sphere was turbulent. The strato-
sphere was not, it was stratified. The
theory of gas dynamics should en-
able one to calculate nature an ex-
tent of these strata. It was “most
obvious” that the gases would sepa-
rate according to their specific grav-

136

ity. Near the ground we had the
standard mixture, but in the strato-
sphere nitrogen should become still
more preponderant at first, until re-
placed in turn by hydrogen. Hence
you had first the mixed troposphere,
then the nitrogen stratosphere,
above that the hydrogen sphere and
above that the geocoronium sphere.
Geocoronium was an unknown ele-
ment, lighter still than hydrogen,
forming the sun’s corona. Like
helium it might still be discovered
in our own atmosphere.

The war delayed the acceptance
of that theory for a while so that it
did not emerge full strength until
1920-1925. although published origi-
nally in 1911. R. PT. Goddard
coupled a short recounting of that
theory with a plea for rockets as
research instruments. Svante Ar-
rhenius enlarged upon Wegener’s
work and published a neat diagram
(Figure: "Model 1925”).

To tell chronologically what hap-
pened after 1925 would only result
in confusion, it is now necessary to
follow various lines of development
without too much attention to their
interference and to crossed wires.
First let’s dispose of the coronium
and its assumed twin geocoronium.
In 1911, when Wegener advanced
the idea, there were still a number
of holes in the Periodic Table of
the Elements. By 1950 they were
virtually all filled in and there sim-
ply was no room for the element
coronium. But the corona was there
and it emitted lines in the spectrum

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

which did not correspond to any
known element, even though virtu-
ally every element was known.
Hence the corona probably con-
sisted of a known element which,
because of— to us— highly unusual
conditions emitted lines not known.
To make a long story short, the
unknown coronal lines and a num-
ber of others owed their existence
to the emissions from “stripped”
atoms, atoms which had lost some
of their electrons. In the case of
the corona a Swedish physicist,
B. Edlen, showed in 1940 that the
strongest coronal line, the so-called
green line, which had been the cause
of all the speculation, was emitted
by thirteen times ionized iron, iron
atoms which had lost thirteen of
their normal twenty-six electrons.
That ended coronium.

But Wegener’s third layer, which
he had called the hydrogen sphere,
was established without the chemi-
cal implication and with a different
name by Arthur Edwin Kennedy of
Harvard and Oliver Heaviside of
England. They proved that there
had to be an ionized layer of air
above the stratosphere. Logically
it came to be called ionosphere and
the shell dividing the statosphere
from this higher ionosphere was
named sttalo pause. At first radio
engineers, in order to honor the two
men, called the “reflecting layer”
above the stratosphere the Ken-
nedy— Heaviside Layer. But there
were some difficulties, it seemed to
change altitude constantly, it seemed
to disappear at times, in short it did

OUR TURBULENT ATMOSPHERE

not behave properly. Part of which
was due to the fact that experi-
menters did not always have the
wave length they wanted at their
disposal. Of course some outright
mistakes were made too. And
some unforeseen difficulties got in
the way.

I know of one reflection experi-
ment with a rather short wave
length which sometimes worked
nicely and not at ad at other times.
“Not at ad” means just that, no
signal was received at the other end
and the party concerned telephoned
asking in honeyed tones: “Pray,
kind sir, why didn’t you start your
little transmitter on time?”, then re-
peating the sentence in somewhat
different language. It turned 'out
that they had picked the wave
length which is characterized by
maximum absorption in water
vapor.

The outcome of it all was that the
assumption of just one Kennelly-
Heaviside Layer had been a mis-
take, there are several reflecting lay-
ers. The “D-Region” at about fifty
kilometers will reflect only very
long radio waves— 20-500 kilocycles
—and lets ad others pass. The “Et-
Region” at about one hundred kilo-
meters reflects the wave lengths
used for standard— entertainment-
broadcasting, 500 to 1500 kilocycles.
It is repeated at about one hundred
sixty kilometers as “E 2 -Region”.
Naturally none of these regions are
sharply defined, the altitudes men-
tioned merely state where maximum
ionization normally takes place. The

137

high frequency waves, 1500-30,000
kilocycles, are reflected by the “Fj-
Region” at about two hundred kilo-
meters in daytime, and, if they are
short enough to pass F^ by the “F 2 -
Region” at two hundred eighty kilo-
meters at night. During the day
F 2 either disappears, or is full of
holes, or changes altitude and blends
with Fi ; it is largely a matter of in-
terpretation and either one of the
three explanations, or even all three,
may be correct. Occasionally “er-
ratic E” and “erratic F” has been
detected traveling vertically, a be-
havior which might be compared to
cirrus clouds suddenly descending
quickly and merging with cumulus.

Since all these layers are regions
of ionization and are ionized by en-
ergy entering from space these
things are tied up with solar activity.
The best one can say at this mo-
ment is that we would like to know
much more and probably will in
1960.

And that brings us to the current
Atmosphere Model of which it is
frankly admitted that it isn’t as defi-
nite by far as we would like it to be.
But before its weaknesses can be
pointed out, another development
has to be discussed, because it led to
something very important : modern
instrumentation.

iTO BE CONCLUDED

THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY

Apparently the general reader reaction on the December issue was that, despite the
natural comparison with the preceding, specially rigged, November issue, December
produced a pretty fair crop of stories. I liked them myself, naturally— they wouldn’t
have been there if I didn’t— so, of course, I agree with you, gentlemen ! Anyway, here
are the scores :

DECEMBER 1949 ISSUE

Place

Story

Author

Points

1 .

The Witches of Karres

James H. Schmitz

2.19

2.

. . . And Now You Don’t (II)

Isaac Asimov

2.27

3.

Gulf (II)

Robert A. Heinlein

2.71

4.

A Can of Vacuum

L. Ron Hubbard

3.57

5.

Reversion

M. C. Pease

4.19

Please notice that the first three places are practically a three-way tie, a terrific
struggle indeed. And congratulations to Schmitz; his second story nosed out two of
the toughest possible competitors 1

The Editor

138

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

WA1.DG and

ISAAC

Asimov

A full-length novel, never before published!

PEBBLE

IN THE SKY

What strange land was this in which
Joseph Schwartz found himself? To be
sure, he was still on Earth, but it looked
different in Galactic Era 827. Why was
Earth a pariah planet— his fellow Earth-
lings a persecuted minority? What was the
sinister force which threatened the destruc-
tion of not one planet but the entire Uni-
verse? Suddenly Schwartz found himself
the only man with a chance of averting a
cosmic disaster— and he was so homesick
and confused he wasn’t even sure he cared
to try . . . $2.50

ii AGIO, Ins.

Two wonderful, wacky, classic science
fiction novels, complete in one book. In the
first, Waldo Farthingwaite Jones investi-
gates the mysterious crackups of some
"Broomsticks,” the interplanetary speed-
sters so popular for town and country tra-
vel. In Magic, Inc. the old "protection”
racket rears its ugly head in the Magic In-
dustry. Both stories are wonderful satires
on our own world— if it were translated
suddenly into cosmic terms. Heinlein at
his incomparable best! $2.50

S DOUBLEDAY SCIENCE FICTION

— — — — — — — — — — — —

;To: DOUBLEDAY & CO., INC. |
| Dept. ASF 3, Garden City, N.Y. |

■ Bend me the books I have checked below. Ship ■
_ □ C.O.D. or □ $ enclosed ®

I .PEBBLE IN THE SKY. by Isaac Asimov, |

■ $2.50 „ |

1 WALDO and MAGIC INC., by Robert A. 1

I Heinlein, $2.50 I

1

1

r 1

CONFORMITY EXPECTED

H. B. FYFE

That somebody was crazy was beyond question; the ques-
tion was , hoivever, who was off the beam — and where?

Bill Lang peered over the pilot’s
head, his big hands with the wrench-'
scarred knuckles resting lightly upon
the other’s lean shoulders.

“Right one, Lou?” he asked.

“If I held Finley’s calculation right
side up, it is,” answered d’Andrea.

He began to whistle a tune popular

when they had left Earth over three
months earlier, thoughtfully drag-
ging all the gaiety out of it.

The small, bluish planet on the
telescreen was Kaolo, Procyon VI—
they hoped. There was some possi-
bility of error.

“I don’t believe in spitting on blue-

140

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

prints I can’t read,” said Lang,
hunching his heavy shoulders un-
easily, “but could he go far wrong in
only eleven light-years?”

D’Andrea drummed slim fingers
on the metal surface of the control
desk.

“No, even T can tell that it’s
Procyon,” he decided. “I just hope
we don’t have to shuffle around from
one planet to another to find the
company’s base.”

“Why should we?” demanded a
new voice. “Get us lost already,
d’Andrea ?”

Lang felt the pilot’s shoulders stiff-
en. He removed his hands and
turned to face the other member of
the freighter’s crew. Dave Finley,
the astrogator, slid the door shut be-
hind him and slouched into the room.

“I see I can hardly trust you long
enough to go for an aspirin, much
less to sleep an hour.”

His voice was high and nasal, not
quite a whine,.

“What hurts this time?” asked
d’Andrea unfeelingly.

Finley cast him a sullen glance.
Fie ran a pudgy hand through his
sandy hair and all but pouted. Lang
diverted his own eyes uncomfort-
ably from the pale face. It was be-
coming difficult to remember that
Finley had not been well for more
than a month.

He thought to himself that the So-
larian Export Company could af-
ford a spare man op the short-range
interstellar ships. T rue, nearly
everything but part of the thinking
was done mechanically ; but he, for

CONFORMITY EXPECTED

one, did not know how to weld to-
gether a worn out human nervous
system.

Finley had been scaring them for
some time. They depended upon
him for locating landing places in the
dead emptiness of space. With the
magnitudes of interstellar distances
and speeds, precise accuracy was re-
quired of an astrogator.

But what if you know your astro-
gator is scared silly? Lang thought,
moving toward the door.

“I better get back an’ see that
everything’s in working order for the
landing,” he muttered.

“Something wrong?” asked Finley
sharply.

He peered anxiously at Lang. The
mechanic noticed that perspiration
was shining on the other’s fleshv face.

“What’s the matter, d’Andrea?”
shrilled Finley. “You’ll get us killed,
landing with something wrong with
•the ship—”

“Nothing’s wrong— with the ship !”
said d’Andrea disgustedly.

“Calm down, Dave,” said Lang.

“Calm down! How. can T, with
this pain in my shoulder?”

He fumbled at the loose collar of
his shirt, breathing hard.

“Bill,” said d’Andrea, still peering
at the screen.

“Yeah?”

“I’ll be busy in a few minutes.
Keep him out of my way.”

“Come on, Dave,” wheedled Lang.
“Help me check the automatics.”

He gestured toward the door, but
the astrogator shrank away. Finley
backed against the cabinet containing

141

their spacesuits. He licked his lips
and panted. With dilated pupils, he
stared over Lang’s shoulder. The
pulse in his neck throbbed wildly.

“What’s the matter?” asked Lang.

“You know what the matter is.
Why doesn’t one of you do some-
thing? No— you’d rather let us be
killed !”

D’Andrea’s red-gold head was bent
over his dials. He fingered certain
buttons on his control panel thought-
fully.

Finley crouched by the cabinet,
looking trapped. Lang, watching
him, felt uncomfortable-at seeing his
fear. The astrogator’s continual
worrying and complaining had made
him hard to live with during the past
few weeks.

Lang suddenly sensed trouble.
Finley was motionless, but not really
quiet. Beneath the surface was tur-
moil.

D’Andrea’s fingers tensed. He
pressed the buttons.

As they felt the vibration of the
steering blasts, Finley lost all control.
Howling, he flung himself at the
pilot.

Lang grabbed him around the
body, trying to pull him down. With-
out normal Earth gravity, however,
his weight was of little use. Just
before Finley had dragged them both
to within reach of the control desk,
Lang shifted and heaved him off his
feet.

D’Andrea flicked a cool, blue
glance over his shoulder, then re-
turned his attention to the Controls,
the dials, the calculations, and the

142

time. They were on their way down.

About three hours later, d’Andrea
contacted Solarian Export’s station
on Kaolo, and received directions to
the company’s reservation. They
landed shortly thereafter.

Lang checked that Finley, strapped
into his bunk, was all right. The
mechanic tenderly pinched the
bruised mark on his left forearm, to
see if the bleeding had really
stopped. Despite his effort to make
allowances, he resented that.

“Fine thing,” he grumbled to him-
self. “Bitin’ a fellow you been livin’
with. I shoulda hit him.”

He went forward and found
d’Andrea locking the controls.

“What are you gonna do, Lou?”
he asked glumly.

D’Andrea pulled on a uniform
jacket, shrugging his shoulders at
the unfamiliar feeling after months
in space.

“First thing,” he said, “we’d bet-
ter see the factor and ask him if he
has an Earthman doctor here.”

“That bad ?”

“Sure. Look it up in the tables.
He’s out of his orbit.”

“What if there ain’t a doctor— how
do we get back?”

“Get another astrogator somehow,
unless you want to try it.”

Lang grimaced and shook his
head. They made sure Finley’s door
was securely locked, then opened an
exit port. Leaving the ship, they
discovered a small ground pickup
waiting.

It was driven by a deeply tanned
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Earthman. Beside him squatted a
handsome, four-legged animal about
the size of a leopard. Its fur was
dark brown, with lighter areas on the
round head. The gray color of the
skin, showing on the pushed-in snout,
was not disturbing ; but to the Earth-
men, the two tentacles growing from
the back of the neck seemed dispro-
portionately heavy.

“Don’ pay no mind tuh them,”
said the driver, noting their stares.
“Tha’s whut they use fer arms.”

“Kinda big for a pet, ain’t it?”
asked Lang.

The driver looked at him with an
embarrassed, pitying smirk. He
shrugged ruefully.

“I owe you an apology, James,”
said the Kaolan, in a humming but
distinct voice. “Yesterday, I said
you were stupid.”

He stared at Lang and d’ Andrea,
smiling unpleasantly with pinkish
teeth, Lang turned red and climbed
into the rear seat. After directing a
hard look between the Kaolan’s
black eyes, d’Andrea followed.

They were driven in silence to the
one-story administration building.
This was constructed of white rock
and decorated with a few scrubby
bushes, the largest form of vegeta-
tion in sight. The Kaolan jumped
down with a heavy grace.

“Return to the garage, James,” he
told the driver. “Earthmen, my
name is Munaaz. I will take you to
the factor, Cowper.”

They gave Munaaz their names
and followed him into a wide hall.

They glimpsed several offices, with
many of the desks occupied by
Kaolans.

Munaaz padded into a large office,
where he introduced them to George
Cowper. The man in charge of’ this
base of the Solarian Export Company
was of medium height, lean, with
sandy-gray hair and faded but alert
blue eyes. Like the driver, he had
a deep tan, and fine wrinkles around
his eyes made his skin seem dried-
out when he smiled.

“Thought you had three, in the
crew,” he remarked, waving them to
chairs.

“We have,” said the pilot. “As a
matter of fact. I’d like a word with
you about that.”

Munaaz settled himself comfort-
ably on a leather-covered ottoman.
He curled one forefoot stiffly down-
ward, but seemed prepared to listen
at his ease. D’Andrea looked an-
noyed.

“Do you have a doctor at the res-
ervation here?” he asked.

“Of course. Your man got any-
thing contagious?”

“No, it’s not that,” said d’Andrea.

“Kaolan doctors are much better,”
observed Munaaz.

He rose to push a button set beside
the window. The opaqueness of the
latter changed and Procyon’s glare
lit the office. From a tiny movement
at the corners of Cowper’s mouth,
Lang realized that the factor suf-
fered from Munaaz chronically.

D’Andrea surrendered to Mu-
naaz’s patience.

“To tell the truth, Mr. Cowper,

143

CONFORMITY EXPECTED

Finley seems to have a nervous
breakdown, or something.”

“No such thing, even in'" Earth-
men,” declared the Kaolan. “You
mean he allowed himself to become
mentally disorderly?”

Disorderly', thought Lang. Cowper
has a good poker Pace.

Nevertheless, without actually
changing expression, the factor gave
the impression of being uncomfort-
able.

“An Earth psychiatrist is not per-
mitted by charter,” he said.

“Kaolans,” announced Munaaz,
“have great interest in the thinking
processes of other forms of life.”

Lang felt like something in a jar.

He wished that the Kaolan would
stop swinging his tentacles to and
fro, touching the tips in front and
then behind his hack almost like a
man exercising with Indian clubs.
In a minute, he supposed, Munaaz
would want to know Finley’s symp-
toms.

“H ow does your friend act?”
asked Cowper, as if someone must.

D’Andrea told him. Lang added
a ffew details.

“Needs a rest, I suppose,” agreed
Cowper sadly. “And I wanted you
to take those precision tools over
to Procyon V.”

“What?” D’Andrea demanded.

“Yes, for a colony the Kaolans are
building up on the next planet.”

“Just an experimental outpost,”
Munaaz assured them. “Of course,
we are perfectly satisfied with our
present location.”

Lang wondered who cared, but he

144

noticed that Cowper accepted the re-
mark as a matter of course.

“Well, I don’t like risking it by
myself,” said d’ Andrea.

Munaaz rolled dark eyes at him
and patted his tentacle tips together
six or eight times, with excited
speed.

“Have a solution,” he said. “Leave
him here while you go to'Uameed.
Before you return, we will restore
him to order.”

“How do we get there?” objected
the pilot.

“We will make a Kaolan astro-
gator go with you.”

“Well, don’t force anyone on our
account !” cried d’Andrea, his voice
soaring to the defiant tone of a bel-
ligerent tomcat.

“It is a small thing,” insisted
Munaaz. “I myself could do it, .be-
ing a mathematician.”

“You ?”

“Oh, yes, T studied the subject as
part of a program to learn distances
of outer astronomical bodies. Astro-
gation would be simple.”

They turned to the factor. Cow-
per said he had to admit that the
Kaolans accomplished remarkable
things in psychology. Lang sensed
a hint of reservation, hut Munaaz
began a sales talk.

It was so simple. The Eartliman
astrogator had merely become afraid,
because of a mental conflict. He was
fatigued, or unsure of himself. The
Kaolans could find the trouble quick-
ly. Very quickly. It would take
perhaps five days to make the round

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

trip to TJameed, Finley would be re-
covered before then.

In fact, the Kaolans would blame
themselves if he should leave in such
an erratic condition. Conformity to
normal straight thinking was ex-
pected on Kaolo.

“Go get your boy,” advised Cow-
per, sighing. “While Munaaz takes
him away and finds a substitute, I’ll
brief you on TJameed.”

In the end, Covvper saw them off
with a Kaolan named Yeeuli.

“Just take it easy, boys,” was his
parting advice. “Keep your screens
focused and your transmitter quiet.”

When' the officious Munaaz had
bustled off with Finley, the factor
had thought the spacemen close to
making some sharp remarks. He
hoped they would change their atti-
tude ; but he rather feared they
would not, especially upon finding
Yeeuli just as typical of his people
as was Munaaz.

It so happened that when they re-
turned from TJameed, the fifth planet
of Procyon, Cowper witnessed
d’ Andrea’s landing from the door-
way of the administration building.

“Not as good as he was last time,”
he murmured to himself.

He saw three figures scramble out
of the exit before the pickup even
reached the ship. One made for the
vehicle, but the other two brushed it
aside, clambered in, and left the first
figure gesticulating in a cloud of dust.
It immediately set out at a gallop for
another part of the landing field.

Cowper sighed and returned to his

office. Presently, d’ Andrea and
Lang stamped down the hall and
burst in on him.

D’Andrea pointed a shaking finger
at the factor and opened his mouth.
The words seemed to choke in his
throat.

“You look,” said Cowper mildly,
“like a couple of young fellows who
just found out that Kaolo is the
official center of the universe.

The pilot swore. Lang merely
growled wordlessly.

“You knew!” d’ Andrea accused.
“You could have told us what we
were getting for an astrogator.”

“Sunspots on the brain, that’s
what he’s got,” said Lang.

“They are all the same, boys,” said
Covvper,

“Doesn’t seem to bother you,”
d’Andrea commented acidly.

“You can get used to anything,”
the factor told him. “As soon as
you can say with a straight face that
you really believe they have the in-
side orbit on the galaxy, you get
along fine.”

“Did you ever spend two weeks
locked in with one of them? I was
beginning to feel like a moron 1”

“How smart are they?” asked
Lang.

“Oh . . . about our equal, with less
general information,” said Cowper.
“Trouble is, they are absolutely sure
they are perfect, as well as being the
very middle of everything. Some
even object to a colony as far away as
TJameed.”

“Sacrilege!” quoted d’Andrea,

CONFORMITY EXPECTED

145

throwing up his hands. “I know.
Yeeuli was against it.”

“All right, so they’re all super-
novas!” complained Lang. “Why.
didn’t he say we were dumb and let
it go at that?”

“Oh, that would not be enough,”
said the factor. “You may be bar-
barian Earthmen, but you still have
moral rights. Yeeuli was obligated
to help you reach opinions that con-
form.”

D’Andrea looked about as if he
would like to spit. He slumped into
a chair.

“Two weeks,” he groaned. “Swing-
ing those tentacles back and forth
while he told me what was w'rong
with my mind !”

“Thought I’d let him ‘adjust’ my
automatics,” muttered Lang darkly.
“Say, don’t they ever sit comfort-
able?”

“You noticed that?” asked Cow-
per. “Just some folderol about main-
taining awareness of their physical
limitations, as near as I can gather
from hints.”

He allowed them to brood for a
while, then suggested that they get
hack to their ship and requisition
any supplies they might need for the
flight hack to Earth.

The spacemen got a ride out to the
ship, saw to the necessary details,
and slept. When they were sum-
moned next to Cowper’s office, it
was still “afternoon” on Kaolo.

The factor had their papers ready,
and said that Munaaz was bringing

Finley. In a few minutes, the latter
pair arrived.

Munaaz and Cowper exchanged
greetings, and everyone took a seat.
Finley, like the Kaolan, chose one
of the ottomans.

“How do you feel, Dave?” asked
Lang.

“Tetter than I ever did before,”
replied the astrogator.

He crossed one leg over the other,
pointing the foot stiffly downward.
Lang thought he was still a hit nerv-
ous, although his sullen expression
had vanished.

Munaaz turned to the other space-
men.

“Yeeuli is very discouraged with
you,” he charged.

“Likewise,” said d’Andrea suc-
cinctly.

Munaaz exercised his tentacles
with several swings.

“We are happy to accept your
products,” he began. “Some of
them we have not had time to de-
velop for ourselves.”

“Oh, is that it?” commented the
pilot sourly.

“Moreover, we would not refuse
you enlightening contact with us.
Why, then, did you lock Yeeuli into
the observation dome?”

“He’d already played every music
wire about three times,” said Lang.
“It was the only way we could get
any sleep.”

“Ah, so? But, on the whole, your
behavior has us worried.”

Cowper interrupted to suggest
that it did not matter too much, since
the Earthmen were about to leave for

146

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

their own system. He would arrange
for them to pick up a cargo at a
planet of a small star on their way.

“But are they competent to
leave?” objected Munaaz. “One we
cured, but—”

“Arrgh !” said Lang.

“You see?” Munaaz asked Cow-
per. “The one had what you Earth-
men, judging from your recordings,
would call an anxiety state. I do not
feel satisfied that the others are
normal.”

“You must remember,” said Cow-
per, “that on Earth, their abnor-
mality would ndt be noticed, might
even he an advantage.”

“That may, unfortunately, be
true,” admitted the Kaolan. “It is
another proof of our superior posi-
tion. Nevertheless, we ought to help
them to mold their thoughts.”

D’Andrea had been fidgeting im-
patiently. Now he spoke.

“How about it, Dave? Want to
check your things before we sign the
inspection slip?”

“I suppose I had better,” said
Finley reluctantly. “I really do not
feel like leaving here, but—”

“You will be back,” said Munaaz,
stpiling encouragingly with his pink-
ish teeth.

Lang thought that the Kaolan’s
tone had been less impersonal than
when he had spoken to the other
Earthmen.

He and d’ Andrea accompanied the
astrogator out to the ship. Nothing
remained to be done before leaving,

but Finley wandered about with a
disapproving attitude.

“What’s the matter?” asked
d’Andrea finally. “Did Yeeuli hide
your calculator ?”

“No, no, a Kaolan would not do
such a thing. But I feel that much
about this ship is unsatisfactory. Be-
sides, it is very foolish, now we are
here, to go out again.”

“Out?” repeated Lang.

“This is the center of culture of the
universe,” protested Finley. “Can
you not feel it, even in your ig-
norance ?”

Lang and the pilot exchanged
glances.

“What did they say was wrong
with you?” asked d’Andrea.

“Oh, that ... I hardly remem-
ber how I felt before.”

He saw their looks, as he seated
himself on the deck.

“Honestly, fellows, you ought to
have a talk with Munaaz. He could
convince you—”

“—that I ought to stuff your head
into one of the jets before we take
off,” exclaimed d’Andrea. “Look at
him, Bill.”

Finley was sitting comfortably ex-
cept that he held one hand and fore-
arm pointing stiffly downward, the
forefinger extended towarc the deck.

The deck, Lang wondered, or the
center of Kaolo? -

“Listen, Finley,” he said, “are you
sure you’re all right? Can you fig-
ure your courses O.K. ?”

Finley squirmed as if he woidd
prefer to avoid the subject. D’Andrea
immediately demanded reassurance.

CONFORMITY EXPECTED

147

“It will come back to me, no
doubt,” said Finley. “Could we turn
on the record player? It is very
depressing in here.”

“What do you mean— it’ll come
back to you?” bellowed d’Andrea.
“Don’t you remember any astroga-
tion?”

Finley made a condescending ges-
ture for silence.

“You would hardly understand,”
he said. “We have been parted only
a few solar days ; but mentally, I have
lived much longer than that, back-
ward and forward in my mind. It
seems a very long time since' I last
worked an astrogation problem.”

D’Andrea flung his head back and
spread his arms wide. Even his red-
gold hair gave the impression of
standing up.

“It will be all right,” soothed Fin-
ley. “Of one thing I am sure— I can
always find our way safely back
here.”

Lang felt a nightmarish numb-
ness.

“Wait a minute, Lou,” he mur-
mured to the pilot, who was groping
toward verbal expression by shaking
a bunch of fingers under Finley’s
nose. “We better take it to Cowper.
He can tell us if this is permanent.”

Finley smirked at him pityingly,
but made no objection to leaving the
ship. He seemed, in fact, happier .
to do so.

Before reaching Cowper’s office,
d’Andrea regained the power of
speech. He explained emphatically
to the factor how they felt about go-

ing into space with an astrogator in
Finley’s condition.

The individual mentioned sighed
and took on a martyred expression.
Appearing to find the conversation
oppressively quiet, he hummed a
tune to himself and swung his arms
casually back and forth.

“Just look at him!” d’Andrea fin-
ished. “Does he look as if he can
think straight?”

Finley bridled slightly.

“I can think a good deal straighter
than you, if you only knew it.”

He stalked out of the office, swing-
ing his arms indignantly.

, Cowper turned to the others. For
the first time since they had met,
Lang thought he looked concerned.

“Listen, boys,” he said. “My
guess is he will stay that way. I
have seen it once or twice before.
They filled him so full of their ideas,
at a time when he had been made
peculiarly susceptible to them, that
he hardly thinks humanly now.”

D’Andrea swore.

“No need to take it that way. He
is probably quite content. Just im-
agine how you would feel if you were
accepted into a culture which set to
rest all your doubts about the uni-
verse.”

He squinted at them searchingly,
the fine wrinkles around his eyes re-
minding them of his age.

“All your doubts,” he repeated.
“We all have some, but Kaolans just
know the answers to everything.

“Personally,” hfe continued, “I
just keep my mouth shut and fry
to rub their fur the right way.

148

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Good business. But the point now got left behind that way a few months
is what you want to do.” ago—”

“What I don't want to do,” de- He hesitated and snapped his
dared Lang, “is trust him to get us fingers.

home. I’d rather gamble on “Say! He was a third officer on a
d’ Andrea, from star to star.” big, deep-space ship. How much

“Can you dig up an astrogator astrogation would he know?”
anywhere?” asked the pilot. “Plenty,” said d’ Andrea promptly. '

“I can try,” said Cowper. “Not “They stay out for years. Part of his
many stop off here.” job to know it, just in case.”

“While you do,” said d’Andrea, “And you think he could get back
“I’m going back to the ship and open to Earth from here ?”
a bottle we’ve been saving.” “Just tell us where to find him!”

“Not something you bought here?” said the pilot,
asked Cowper quickly. Cowper told them that the space-

“No, Earth stuff. Why?” man, Steffens, had been given a room

“Don’t fool with the Kaolan prod- at the reservation to keep him out of
ucts. There was an Earthman who further trouble. If not there, he

CONFORMITY EXPECTED

149

might be at the bar of the recreation
building.

“We have him weaning on Earth-
type beer,” he called as Lang and
d’Andrea whirled out of the office.

They hurried over to the living
quarters, to he faced with a long
hallway of similar doors. Lang saw
a carton standing outside one. It
was a box of canned beer. He
knocked.

The door was opened eventually
by a tall, yawning redhead, on whose
chin glinted a golden red stubble. He
was badly freckled, hut well-mel-
lowed.

“You, Steffens?” inquired the di-
rect d’Andrea.

The redhead nodded amiably. He
took the carton from Lang.

“Must have been delivered while
I was busy,” he drawled.

“Think you could .compute a
curve for Sol ?” asked d’Andrea.

“Got about twenty or thirty pre-
calculated,” grinned Steffens. “Had
time on my hands in this place.”

“We’re from that ship out on the
field. We need an astrogator. I
hear you could use a job.”

Steffens apparently had been un-
employed for some time. The prom-
ise of full pay convinced him. They
took time only for a round of beer
and to pack Steffens’ few personal
belongings, including a portfolio of
calculations. Lang brought the beer.

Aboard the ship, d’Andrea asked
how soon they could leave.

“From what I hear,” said Steffens,
“the sooner the better. That Kaolan

you had with you to Uameecl is rais-
ing a stink.”

“He’s raising a stink !” exclaimed
d’Andrea.

“You guys are air-tight in the
head, aren’t you? I heard there’s
talk of holding you up for observa-
tion.”

“You want the job? Show ns a
curve !”

Steffens chose a course calculation
from his supply, and laid the port-
folio on the edge of the control desk.

“That ought to put us in position
for interstellar drive.”

D’Andrea immediately began to
check his controls.

“Guess you’ll be glad to get into
space,” said Lang.

“Sure am,” Steffens said, stretch-
ing his long arms.

“Heard about our other man tak-
ing the cure ?”

“Yeah. Gotta watch these Kao-
Ians. They get you down.”

“Been here long?” asked Lang.

“Just long enough to sober up and
get my true hearings.”

D’Andrea’s attention was on his
instruments, but Lang saw the new
astrogator stop stretching and begin
to swing his arms to and fro. The
mechanic began to worry.

“You got a music player?” asked
Steffens. “This place could use a
little cheering up.”

“It don’t work any more,” said
Lang shortly.

Steffens shrugged. He began to
potter about. Lang thought he was
pale behind the freckles, perhaps
growing sober.

150

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“You close the port yet?” asked
the redhead suddenly.

D’Andrea looked up.

“Not yet. Forget something?”

“No . . . I . . . that is—” He swal-
lowed. “JVlieve I’ll just step out for
a breath of air—”

They watched him leave the con-
trol room. Then, with a sudden
premonition of loss, both leaped to
follow.

They found Steffens leaning de-
jectedly against the hull.

“What hit you?” demanded
d’ Andrea.

“Come on inside,” urged Lang.
“Here come Cowper and Munaaz in
that one-lung taxi !”

Steffens shook his head silently.
The pickup, guided by the san#
leather-faced driver, pulled up before
them. Cowper and the Kaolan
alighted.

“Where are you going?” asked
Munaaz upon noticing Steffens.

“Nowhere, I guess,” mumbled the
redhead. “I needed beer money, but
when I began to think maybe I
couldn’t get a berth back again, it
didn’t look so good—”

“What’s the matter?” d’ Andrea
snorted. “We got the plague?”

Cowper raised a hand at him.
Munaaz. paid no attention.

“Of course, Red One,” he said,
smoothing his brown fur, “if you
wish to go, it may be safe. You have
had enough instruction to maintain
your mental balance until you re-
turn.”

“No z . . I . . . sorry, fellows,”
muttered Steffens, looking away.

“Guess I'm used to it here. B’lieve
I’ll go have a drink.”

He trudged away without glanc-
ing back.

“Drinking is the one fault he re-
tains,” said Munaaz.

He stared contemplatively after
the Earthman. Cowper took the mo-
ment to explain that Finley had
begged for a job with the factor. The
latter had been reluctant to waste
the advantage it would give him in
dealing with the natives.

“Well, I guess I’ll get back to the
office,” he said. “I’ll see you boys
later. Coming, Munaaz?”

“You go ahead,” suggested the
Kaolan. “James can return for me.”

When the pickup had left, Munaaz
turned to Lang and d’ Andrea.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“What do you mean ?” countered
d’ Andrea, as if he knew very well
what was meant, and resented it.

“Are you at all disturbed men-
tally?”

“Only at not having an astro-
gator,” said the pilot.

“I cannot see how you can con-
tinue with that attitude.”

“Honestly, we’re just like millions
of other Rarthmen. Let’s get inside,
Bill.”

“Take your time,” muttered Lang.

He had been gazing sullenly at the
slouching figure in the distance.
Steffens reached the recreation
building and disappeared within.
Deep inside his stolid system, Lang
was beginning to generate steam.
Too many annoying frustrations, too

CONFORMITY EXPECTED

151

many obstacles. He wished he could
pop off like- d’ Andrea, and have it
over.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he mused
aloud. “I always thought of Earth-
men as being normal, but who can
say what’s normal ?”

“Interesting,” said Munaaz. “It
indicates hope for you.”

“Oh, don’t think Earthmen are
dumb,” said Lang. “We can take
the facts when we see them. But
how to get them?”

“What’s bending your orbit?”
asked d'Andrea.

“Do not interrupt him,” said
Munaaz, showing his pinkish teeth
in a friendly smile. "I can see that
all your Earth needs is someone to
explain the proper view of the uni-
verse.”

“But who could do it?” com-
plained Lang.

“I'could,” mused Munaaz. “It is
really my duty—”

“No!” shouted d’Andrea. "What-
ever you two—”

“Oh, shut up, Lou !” said Lang,
grabbing the pilot’s elbow in a big
hand and shoving him into the port.
“We can’t expect Munaaz to do it,
even if he does know enough math
to astrogate.”

“Why, yes !” hummed Munaaz,
whipping his tentacles rapidly back
and forth. “Of course. What an
opportunity !”

D’Andrea caught Lang’s wink,
and restrained himself.

“If you think you ought to, Mu-
naaz,” said Lang, /‘why not get
aboard right now ? Yeeuli left every-

152

thing you’ll need. We can radio
back to Cowper about it.”

Munaaz admitted enthusiasm. To
cure a whole planet of wrong think-
ing! On second thought, however,
he decided that the idea would be
unfair to his fellow Kaolans.

Sometimes, thought Lang, it’s bet-
ter to be big than smart. I’m sick
of this deep thinking and polite talk.

He took a quick step to his right,
whirled, and grabbed Munaaz around
the middle. He heaved the dum-
founded Kaolan off the ground and -
staggered into the entrance port.

“Bill! What-”

D’ Andrea’s curiosity was side-
tracked as the still speechless Kaolan
began to struggle, and the pilot was
caught between Lang’s back and the
bulkhead.

“Earthman ! Restrain yourself !”
demanded Munaaz, seizing the edge
of the inner doorway with a
tentacle.

“I can’t!” yelled Lang. “I don’t
know what I’m doing!”

He trod on the tentacle. Munaaz
bleated and let go. Amid a great
deal of thrashing about and thudding
against bulkheads and furnishings,
Lang and his captive juggernauted
along the short corridor to Finley’s
old cabin.

D’Andrea, hands clasped over his'
solar plexus, staggered up as the me-
chanic succeeded in forcing Munaaz
inside and locking the door. Lang
turned the pilot to face toward the
control room.

“Button her up and check for
take-off,” he ordered.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

“Earthman !” called Munaaz, his
humming voice muted by the metal
door. “Listen to me ! I must put
your mind in order.”

“What about the people of Earth?”
demanded Lang.

“Yes,” agreed the Kaolan. “That
may be my destiny. But I must be-
gin with you.”

“I’ll be back after take-off. Strap
yourself in that bunk.”

He went to the control room,
where he found d’Andrea ready.

“You had me worried for a min-
ute,” said the pilot. “Think we can
trust him to astrogate?”

“We still have Steffens’ calcula-
tions,” said Lang, strapping himself

into the astrogator’s seat. “That’s
not all I wanted.”

“What else?”

“The chance to see how a know-it-
all Kaolan makes out in a culture
where he’s the one out of step.”

D’Andrea lifted the ship smoothly.

“You’ll have to keep up some act,
or you’ll be ‘cured’ !” he murmured.
“What can we say when we land on
Earth?”

“Tell the same story we gave the
Kaolans about Finley,” said Lang
vindictively. “What they can cure,
we can cure!”

The image of Kaolo on the screen
began gradually to shrink. Munaaz
was on the’way to his triumph.

THE END

sanw II® -^oks

NOW PUBLISHED AT PRICES YOU CAN AFFORD!

You are only doing justice to your Imagination by thrilling to the Science
Fiction and Fantastic Adventure stories contained in the books listed below!

292. THE PURPLE CLOUD by M. P. Shiel

An invisible force destroys Earth! (Orig. pub. at $2.00)

NOW 79*

2G3. THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY by Ambrose Bierce

Famous witticisms & satire by this great author of the
unusual! ONLY $1.00

19. WARRIOR OF THE DAWN by Howard Browne
Daring adventure in prehistoric times I (Orig. pub. at
$2.00) NOW $1-00

278. SHE by H. Rider Haggard.

Millions have thrilled to this immortal weird-tale! It’s -
remarkable! ONLY 50*

271. LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS by H. S. Jones

Fascinating and authoritative! (Orig. pub. at $3.00)
paper ONLY 35*

194. BEST GHOST STORIES OF M. R. JAMES

22 blood-freezing stories by this popular author 1

NOW 49*

195. LOOKING BACKWARD by Edward Bellomy

An amazing prophetic novel of life in the year 2.000.

ONLY 49*

79. WHOM THE GODS DESTROY by Alfred Bennett

Stirring weird -story of terror in mysterious Tibet. Paper

PRICE 59*

16. TALES OF TERROR edited by Boris Karloff
14 of the world's most terrifying weird-tales! ONLY 49*
290. BEST SUPERNATURAL STORIES OF H. P
LOVECRAFT, edited by A. Derleth

14 hair-raising stories! ONLY 49*

Get acquainted with our Services by sending for FREE lists of WEIRD books on FANTASY, SCIENCE FICTION
and the UNUSUAL. Start receiving our lists now and be eligible for BARGAIN BUYS as we stock them!

TEAR OUT AND MAIL THIS COUPON OR WRITE US TODAY!

292

263

19

114

115

278

271

194

116

117

195

224

226

118

119

10!

79

297

120

121

16

290

1 13

122

123

124

Check here ...

for our FREE

Catalogue. Cash

C.

O.D.

plus

■ ■HI

postage

_ — (

m — — ,

READERS SERVICE BOOK CLUB, Dept. A-2
119 E. San Fernando St., San Jose 21, Calif.

Send to:

PLEASE PRINT

NAME

ADDRESS

CONFORMITY EXPECTED

1S3

BRASS TACKS

Chance remark from “Chance Re-
marks.”

Dear Mr. Campbell :

I found J. J. Coupling’s “Chance
Remarks” so interesting that I
straightway tried an experiment
along the lines suggested on the ar-
ticle itself. To keep it simple as
possible I took merely the first word
and then glanced through until I
found it again and wrote down the
word that followed. I was not par-
ticularly careful and may have over-
looked the first repetition here and
there, but the result is really amaz-
ing. I would have carried the thing
farther save that I could not find the
last word anywhere else, and as it
stands, with the elision of only one

154

two-letter word— shown in parenthe-
sis— and with the period which fol-
lows the last word in the text, it
forms a complete sentence that not
only makes sense but in a somewhat
dogmatic manner settles the argu-
ment mentioned in the sentence in
which the last word occurs.

To keep you in suspense no longer
then, the sentence I obtained reads
as follows :

There can be about the text (as)
much of the observer.

Perhaps I should add that I did
not deliberately “overlook” any
words that should have been used in
order to get a better construction.
Yet I think that, aside from actually
changing words, it would be hard to
express the idea more euphoniously.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

We frequently read in ASF of
alien entities that influence the minds
of men. Possibly such an entity,
whom we might call Deamy Ocro for
want of a better name, so influenced
Mr. Coupling as he wrote the article
that the above sentence came out as
it did.— William Danner, 720 Rock-
wood Avenue, Pittsburgh 16, Pa.

Emergency C ommunication Depart-
ment.

Dear Mr. Campbell :

My wife is seriously ill and I am
trying to contact my son, David.

Knowing that, come what may,
the one sure thing that David would
always manage to get hold of, is
Astounding SCIENCE FICTION,
and , that he always reads it from

cover to cover, I beg you to insert
a note in Brass Tacks for me as
follows : DAVID— Bunny ill. UR-
GENT that you phone immediately.
Much Love. POP

I know of no other means of con-
tacting him ; but I do know that
this is a positive means of doing so.
— David St. James, 60-07 100th
Street, Corona, New York.

Doable three-way tie!

Dear Mr. Campbell :

To call the November Astound-
ing SCIENCE FICTION a “hat
trick” seems a bit beneath the dig-
nity of such an important event in
the history of science-fiction ; how-
ever, since one prominent amateur
publication challenged you to pro-

SCIENCE & FANTASY FICTION: New Books:

1. The Incomplete Enchanter —

Do Camp & Pratt $2.50

2. Waldo &. Magic, Inc. — by Robert A.

Heinlein (Both in I Volume) 2.50

3. Pebble In the Sky — by Isaac Asimov 2.50

4. Needle — by Hal Clement 2,50

5. Shadow On the Hearth — by Judith Merrii 2.50

6. The Stellar Missiles — by Ed. Earl Repp 2.75

7. The Radium Pool — by Ed. Earl Repp 3.00

8. The Spot of Life — by Hemer E. Flint 3.00

9. Murder Madness — by Murray Leinster 3.00

10. The Kingslayer — by L. Ron Hubbard 3.00

11. The Guide to Imaginative Literature —
Selection of 1000 best books, with review. ... 6.00

12. The Castle of Iron — by De Camp & Pratt.. 2.50

13. What Mad Universe — by Frederic Brown. .. 2.50

14. Men Against the Stars (Anthology) 2.95

15. Masters of Time — by A. E. Van Vogt 3.00

16. Away &, Beyond — by A. E. Van Vogt 4.00

17. The Throne of Saturn &. Others —

by S. Fowler Wright 3.00

18. Dwellers In the Mirage — by A. Merritt ... 3.00

19. The Star Kings — by Edmond Hamilton .... 2.50

20. John Carstairs: Space Detective —

F. B. Long 2.50

21. The Last Space Ship — by Murray Leinster 2.50

22. Science Fiction: Best of 1949 (Anthology) 2.95

23. Sixth Column — by Robert Heinlein 2.50

24. Pattern For Conquest — by Geo. 0. Smith 2.50

25. Nomad — by George 0. Smith 3.00

26. The Blind Spot— by H. E. Flint 3.00

27. The Planeteers — by H. E. Flint 3.00

28. First Lensman — by E. E. Smith 3.00

29. Man Who Sold the Moon — Heinlein 3.00

30. My Best Science Fiction Story (Anthology).

560 pp 3.95

31. The World Below — by S. F. Wright 3.50

32. The Incredible Planet —

by John W. Campbell, Jr. 3,00

33. World’s of Wonder — by Olaf Stapledon

(3 books in one) 3.00

34. From Off This World— (Anthology) 2.95

35. The Conquest of Space — by Willy Ley.

must, by Bonestell 3.95

36. The Omnibus of Time — by Ralph Milne

Farley (Time Travel Anthology) 3.50

37. Lords of Creation — by Eando Binder 3.00

38. Seven Out of Time — by Arthur Leo Zagat 3.00

39. The Homunculus —

by David H. Keller, M.D. 2.50

40. Exiles of Time — by Nelspn Bond 2.50

41. Sidewise In Time & Ofhers —

by Murray Leinster 3.00

42. The Bridge of Light— by A. Hyatt Verrill 3.00

43. The Triton— by L. Ron Hubbard 3.00

FREE with order for $3.00 or more:

A new copy of the current issue of "NEW WORLDS" — only British S. F. Magazine.

FREE: with order for $10.00 or more:

A new copy of: "PILGRIM'S THROUGH TIME & SPACE" — by J. O. Bailey.

A History & Analysis of Science Fiction. 341 pages. Illustrated. Published at $5.00 per copy.
Send checks and money orders to:

STEPHEN'S BOOK SERVICE 9th s,-)

(Open 9:30 A.M. to 6:00 P.M.) Monday through Saturday. (Phone GRam^rcy 3-6294)

BRASS TACKS

iss

duce such a “hat trick” I shall term
it the “Master Hat Trick”.

The editorial on “S. F. Prophecy”
was well put. Now I wonder what
will be the results of thousands of
us expecting ASF to go slick any
month now. Or what will be the
results of thousands of people, or
hundreds of thousands realizing
that science fiction is improving in
quality and increasing in popularity
at a rather rapid rate?

I should like to bring up some
other matter. I’m desperately stall-
ing for time— I want to escape rat-
ing stories this issue, but then I run
into a psychological conflict with
my long standing monthly habit. I
tell you it’s like smoking. What
shall I do? I liked all the stories.

Incidentally, the club here has
had a lot of fun calling each other
names in a quiet sort of way since
reading the installment of Hein-
lein’s story. Now I’m back to rat-
ing stories! Well how about this
one : First Place : Heinlein, Stur-
geon, Asimov ; Second Place : van
Vogt, del Rey, de Camp. ’Bye.—
Rosco Wright, 146 E. 12th, Eugene,
Oregon.

Rigging that November 1949 issue
was fun! Bat thanks go to all the
authors whose full co-operation
zvas, of course, absolutely essen-
tial.

Dear Mr. Campbell :

Thank you. Thank you many
times over. Please express my sin-
cerest gratitude to Messrs. Asimov,

156

Heinlein, Sturgeon, del Rey, van
Vogt, and de Camp. Please thank
C. Tarrant for me. My copy of the
November, 1949 issue of ASF was
even better than winning first prize
on a quiz show. That autographed
copy along with your letter are go-
ing to take their rightful place as
my most treasured possessions as
soon as I can find a safety-deposit
vault to keep them in.

When I opened the magazine and
saw the list of authors I blinked
twice— not— I hang my head in.
shame as I admit it— because I rec-
ognized the connection between that
line-up and my letter of last year,
but merely in wonder that you had
succeeded in getting so many of the
top authors in the whole SF field
into one issue. From now on I’ll
believe that you can do anything.

Speaking of that connection be-
tween my letter and the November
1949 issue : The unfortunate fact is
I had completely forgotten the let-
ter. The “remarkable coincidence”
had to be called to. my attention by a
more observant friend. ’ My face is
even redder for reading the last
paragraph of your editorial and won-
dering what you meant.

Now for a few corrections: It

seems that I did Theodore Sturgeon
a great injustice. Of the shorter
pieces, I rate “What Dead Men
Tell” a first place. There really
wasn’t much to it but ever since
“Thunder And Roses” I have not
been able to resist a Sturgeon story.

Lester del Rey with “Over The
Top” places a close second. It was

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

another case of the longer story win-
ning out. I also like del Rey. His
characterization is more convincing,
perhaps, than any author in the
field.

.Van Vogt next for “Final Com-
mand”. The only kick I have is
that his robot was too human. But
then, that’s what made the story.
As a matter of fact, who am I to
look a gift horse . . .? I also like
van Vogt. He’s hard to understand
sometimes but even then I like him.

As I said once before, “How a
yarn as enjoyable as ‘Finished’ by
an author of de Camp’s stature man-
aged to be only”— last— “proves that
the competition was KEEN.” Need-
less to add, I like L. S. de C.

I was delighted to see the Rich-

ardson article, especially as I had
been wondering lately what the
latest thought might be on this sub-
ject. Very good.

As for the tw-o serials : If I can’t
have Stuart, I am more than willing
to get Asimov. -Matter of fact, it
was the gravest oversight on my
part to leave him out of the other
letter. He is one of my favorites,
with or without his Foundation.

However, I can’t rate the two
serials because I have not read them
yet. I like to save the serials until
I have all of the installments. It
saves wear and tear on my anxiety
nerve.

Because I was so glad to see him
back, I broke that rule to the extent
of reading 'the first couple of pages

A SCIENCE, FANTASY FICTION

LENDING LIBRARY

Ail the books you want to read but can't afford to buy,
mailed direct to your home at AMAZINGLY LOW FEES! All
the LATEST- Science, Fantasy Fiction Books to choose from.

INTERESTED?

Then WRITE TODAY and get all the details at no cost or
obligation to you. Be the Early Bird and learn how you can
become a FREE READER.

ADDRESS all inquiries to

DAYTONS 1217 Southern Boulevard, Bronx 59, N. Y.

Attention Local Residents: Call in Person, write, or phone
DAyton 3-0808 for details on our special Transient Library Plan.

BRASS TACKS

157

of the Heinlein story. It looks great.
For years Heinlein and Mac Donald
were the epitome of ASF. I know
every one of your readers will be
glad to welcome him back.

• The Rogers cover was not up to
the Rogers standard of excellence.
But, I still liked it. To tell the
truth, within the next ten years I
shall probably read the whole issue
from cover to cover fifty times.

My deepest — nay, only — regret
was the absence of Don A. Stuart.
But then, he wasn’t really absent,
was he ? Without him where would
we he?

I hope Willy Ley is coming up
soon.

Thefe is one more thought I have
concerning your magazine. Have
you ever considered its tremendous
educative potentialities?

It has affected my own life to an
extent which is perhaps unmeasur-
able. I have been a constant reader
since before entering Fligh School.
I have read every article and story
which has appeared since 1938. I
have read many which appeared be-
fore that.

I believe I owe to this reading
the development of many interests
which would otherwise never have
been stimulated. I will have earned
a B. S. by next spring which, in my
opinion, would not have happened
without ASF. That may sound
strong, but it is: sincere.

Reading ASF helps to develop a‘
flexibility of mind and a wide va-
riety of interests, which along with
the understanding it gives in the

158

new fields of science and their rela-
tionships to our civilization, are in-
valuable. Men who must cope with
the atom bomb, biological warfare,
rockets, et cetera, need all these
qualities, this knowledge.

And it’s all so painless. I rather
enjoy my lessons.

Thank you again for the splendid
November, 1949 issue of ASF. You
did a fine job, accomplished an al-
most impossible feat.— Richard A.
Hoen, The University Club, 546-
Delaware Avenue, Buffalo 2, New
York.

Most prohecy has minor slips in de-
tail. It would he a stale world in-
deed if there were no room jor
variation of a prediction!

Dear Mr. Campbell :

Heartiest congratulations on the
November 1949 issue! I must ad-
mit that I didn’t tumble to the gag
till I read my Fantasy Review, the
day after. Your line-up for the
issue was terrific.

I must take issue with Mr. Hoen
in putting Sturgeon’s novelette in
last place. It was definitely first, in
my opinion. Although if the time
machine you used hadn’t been
slightly unsynchronized, and Don
Stuart’s story had come through. I’ll
bet Sturgeon would have had to
take second place. Van Vogt’s
story was second only because of
the relative lengths.

One good result of the defect in
the time machine was Asimov’s Sec-

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

ond Foundation serial. If he keeps only by misty rumors, are finally
the same standard, this one will culminating. Only three weeks till
rival “Nightfall”— the best he ever the November issue— THE issue!
did. You’ve played the game well, too

Please, Mr. Campbell, can’t you —from the time of the publication of
get a good mechanic to fix that ma- that imaginary issue letter in the
chine before the next issue? If November, 1948 issue; the evasive
you’re too busy to work on Don Stu- interviews with the top-drawer fans
art angle, the announcement of a and fanzine editors; the poll, not so
new E. E. Smith serial would be much to find out who reads ASF
highly acceptable. To say nothing but to determine what kind of ad-
of Unknown.— Mrs. R S. Brown, vertising is to be accentuated ; prom-
401 S. 14th #7, Albuquerque, New ising to attend the Cinvention, but
Mexico. “unavoidably” missing it ; the vague

ad in the Cinvention program ; the
Anticipation! long but equally noncommittal tele-

gram; the lack of a “In Times to
Dear Mr. Campbell : Come” Department in the current—

Well, the stage is set. All these October— issue— first time I’ve ever
months of silent preparation, broken known it to have been not carried

FANTASTIC FICTION FOR SALE

In response to insistent demand — we again offer for sale choice items from our
tremendous stock of SCIENCE FICTION & WEIRD MAGAZINES— dating back to 1926.

ASTOUNDING— 1930— (Ask for dates in stock) $3.00 each

1931 to 1937 3.00 each

1938 to 1940 2.00 each

1941 .'. 1.00 each

1942 to 1944— (Ask for dates in stock) 1.00 each

1945 to 1949 1. 00 each

UNKNOWN— All Copies— (Ask for dates in stock) 3.00 each

AMAZING STORIES— 1926 to 1928 3.00 each

1929 to 1930 : 2.00 each

1931 to 1949 : 1. 00 each

AMAZING QUARTERLIES— 1928 to 1934 4.00 each

AMAZING ANNUAL -. 7.50 each

FANTASTIC ADVENTURES— 1939 to 1940 2.00 each

1941 to 1949 1.00 each

FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES-1939 to 1940 2.00 each

1941 to 1949 1.00 each

WONDER STORIES— 1929 to 1949 1 .00 each

WONDER QUARTERLIES— 1929 to 1933 2.00 each

ALL OTHER MAGAZINES IN STOCK-Price $1.00 each

JULIUS UNGER • BOX 35 • BROOKLYN 4, N. Y.

BRASS TACKS

159

in recent years ; ’ even the complete
lack of outstanding yarns in the Oc-
tober issue is impressive. It would
seem that it might make the Novem-
ber issue by comparison proportion-
ately more effective.

Well, Mr. Campbell, all I can say
to all this is simply, “It better be
good” Exclamation point !

Not that I found disfavor with
the October issue. On the contrary,
I found it most agreeable through-
out, with .42 separating the first
and the seventh place stories. (With

3.0— Excellent ; 2.0— Very Good;

1 .0— Good ; .42 represents a mighty
small margin of differentiation.)

The ratings :

1. Hubbard, “The Automagic
Horse,” 1.72

2. Davis, “The Aristocrat,” 1.63

3. Neville/ “Cold War,” 1.57

4: Locke, “The Finan-seer,” 1.56

5. Jones, “Production Test,” 1.48

6. MacLean, “Defense Mecha-
nism,” 1.34

7. Anderson, “Time Heals,” 1.30

Issue rating is 1.51— mediocre for

ASF.

In retrospect it would, seem I un-
derestimated the degree of merit in
“Trojan Horse Laugh,” rating it
second to the Phillips yarn ; mean-
while I’ve forgotten what the Phil-
lips story concerned, whereas Mac-
Donald’s little classic remains vivid-
ly etched in my memory. As a mat-
ter of fact I’d rate it among the
three best stories you’ve published
this year.

Until THE next issue, then—
Wm. N. Austin, 3317 West 67th

160

Street, Seattle 7, Washington.

Hoe it’s prophecy required Hein-
lein’s “Gulf” and “Cover by
Rogers”. “Gulf” zvas completed
too late for the long color-plate
process, so . . And Noiv You
Don’t” ivent in. But space limi-
tations forced splitting “Gulf” to
keep to the prophecy. Hence—
two serials.

Dear Mr. Campbell :

Well, it took the October 31st'
issue of Time to answer a question
I had after reading the Editor’s
Page in the November issue of As-
tounding. To wit : What was meant
by the last paragraph— “Like, for
example, this particular issue of As-
tounding Science Fiction.” I im-
agine that Dick IToen was not only
astounded but practically bowled
over when he received his copy of
the issue. Did you have much
trouble getting Hoen’s authors and
story ■ titles together along with
Rogers’ cover?

I will say that Time magazine
seems to be waking -up to Science-
Fiction as a definite branch of litera-
ture. Not too long ago they re-
viewed one of the anthologies, and
only a few weeks ago they men-
tioned the new monthly that is on
the market. Has someone been
educating^ the press and literature
editors? Anyhow it’s darned good
publicity.

As for the November issue you
sure packed it full of reading ma-
terial. However it necessitated the

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

elimination of Brass Tacks, which
is not to my liking, hut I suppose
you can’t have your cake and eat
it, too. BUT, why two serials? I
am opposed to serials generally, al-
though I know they are necessary
occasionally, and you try to keep
them to less than four parts. I can
not see, however, two serials, even
though you maintain the normal
amount of complete stories in the
issue. It just adds to the general
tension when waiting from one
month’s issue to the next. Please,
never again.

Concerning the stories, Sturgeon
did an excellent job on a brand new
approach to the small band of im-

mortals theme. An extremely well
written story with a superb job of
characterization. More along this
line would be appreciated. The
shorts were well written but the
subject matter has been covered so
many times that it seems that no
new approach is possible and it’s
getting rather boring. I’ll reserve
judgment on the serials until they
are completed ,and I have a chance
to read them in their entirety, as
that is the only fair w'ay to judge.
However, I hope that this time we
find out where the Second Founda-
tion is. It’s hard on the nerves.—
Sydney R. Scott, 1633 Roberts
Lane, Falls Church, Virginia.

Space-Ship Design Where Both Air And Water Are Re-cycled in a closed
system of balanced ecology can be profitably used now in these years
before actual construction begins on extra-gravitational ships.

Ideas, designs, and pertinent data— published or unpublished— are needed
today for the construction of a colony-sized amphibian capable of pros-
pecting and mining high-priced minerals under Antarctic winter conditions.

Full credit will be given for all valuable- suggestions in any suitable
releases to publishers.

Poly-source credits in cases where identical material is submitted by
several readers.

No compensation is offered or guaranteed but will be possible if and
when the Antarctic amphibians are built and do produce sufficient valu-
able metals to exceed the cost of construction and operation.

Members of amphibian crews may have opportunity to test the theory that
gases and particles in atmosphere of northern hemisphere do not diffuse
in sufficient quantities across boundaries separating planetary winds to be
detected in atmosphere below latitude 64° south.

Address all communications to: George David Krouse

Z.Y. X. RESEARCH CENTER
GREENBELT, MARYLAND

BRASS TACKS

161

OF HUMAN MEMORY

(Continued from page 4)
hear in memory. Many can see in
memory, but see only in black-and-
whites. Some can not see at all, but
can hear ; finally there are some who
can neither see, hear, nor feel in
memory.

Now it’s fairly obvious that if a
man can not see a face in memory,
he’s going to have trouble recogniz-
ing people ; if he can’t hear in mem-
ory, he’ll have a lot of trouble carry-
ing a tune. How can he; he can’t
hear what he’s trying to sing! But
there are a horde of more subtle, but
more important implications to this
simple little observable fact that peo-
ple remember in different ways.
Psychometrists have developed a lot
of tests that are intended to test for
various psychic troubles— but it’s im-
portant, in devising a test procedure,
to know what your test is actually
testing.

There’s the famous Ink-Blot Test.
It would appear fairly clear that that
test would show a higher correlation
to visual or nonvisual memory than
to any other single factor in a man’s
make-up. The elaborate ESP ex-
periments with clairvoyance, telepa-
thy and the psi functions in general
certainly need correlation with the
subject’s visual and auditory mem-
ory abilities. Musical ability may
be present in a child— but if his audio
memory is blocked, he can’t apply it
very well.

Finally, consider the case of three
children, we’ll call them Sam, who
sees in memory ; Henry, who hears

in memory; and Ned, who has both
visual and audio memory blocked.
In arithmetic and spelling, Sam has
no trouble at all ; when he wants to
know what 7 x 8 is, he sees the page
of the arithmetic book in memory
instantly, and reads the answer.
Henry can’t see it— but he can hear,
in memory, some child reciting it.
Spelling is just a question of seeing
the word in a book somewhere for
Sam, of hearing it spelled for
Henry. But Ned has a tougher' row
to hoe; he has to remember as a
concepJ, that “cat” is spelled see ay
tee, and that 7 x 8 is 56. Ned is, of
course, rated as being somewhat stu-
pid, he’s so much slower learning.

Ned makes up for it later; by the
time he reaches High School he’s
developed his conceptual abilities
tremendously. Geometry, which re-
quires understanding of concepts,
not simply memory, is easier for
Ned. And as a nuclear physicist,
Ned would do fine; the concept of
nuclear structure is as real and
visualizeable to him as the concept
of an automobile going down the
street.

But the labor educational psy-
chologists spend on “visual aids” is
lost on Henry and Ned. A lecturer-
series is much less helpful to Sam
and Ned than to Henry. And all
three children will be helped enor-
mously if the educational psycholo-
gists will take time out, find which
type of memory each has, and teach
him the way to use that memory.

The Editor.

162

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION

Better start
doing this to part
your money

of

You know how money is!

Today it’s in your hand, and
the next day it isn’t!

A lot of people, however, have
found an excellent way to make
certain they will have money
when they need it most.

They salt away part of their pay
each week in U. S. Savings Bonds
through the Payroll Savings Plan
where they work.

They know that saving this way
assures them of the money for a
down payment on a new home. . .
a new car ... or retirement when
the time comes.

Furthermore, in ten years they
get back $4 for every $3 invested
in U. S. Savings Bonds.

Why don’t YOU start saving money
regularly and automatically where
you work, or at your bank through
the Bond-A-Month Plan?

Automatic saving is
sure saving —
U.S. Savings Bonds

Contributed by this magazine in co-operation with the
Magazine Publishers of America as a public service.

INFORMATION IN A HANDY FORM

SS INTERESTING CHAPTERS — Read this partial list of subjects od
which practical information is fully given for quick reference under the
headings as shown below. The complete index tells you quickly on what
page to hud complete information in which you are interested.

Automotive Physics
Diesel Kngines
Hydraulic Shift
The Fluid Drive
Gas Engine Principles
Multi Cylinder Engines
Engines: Stationary
Parts

Engines: Moving Parts
Pistons— Piston Rings
Connecting Rods
Crank Shafts
The Valves— Valve
Gears

Valve Timing
Cams and Cain Action

Cooling Systems
Fuel Feed Systems
Carburetors - Mixtures
Automatic Choke
Super-Chargeis
Transmissions —
Universal
Synchro-Mesh
Clutches— Brakes
Propeller Shafts
The Differential
Rear Axles
The Running Gear
Wheel Alignment

Magneto Ignition
Spark Plugs—
Distributors
Automatic Spark
Control

Ignition Timing
Generators & '1'esting
Starters & Testing
Lighting Systems
Storage Batteries
—Troubles
Battery Charging
—Testing
Knee Action

HIGHLY ENDORSED-
ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION^

Audels Automobile Guide is a
Standard Ready Reference - Fully
Indexed and illustrated.

Explains Theory, Construction
and Servicing of modern motor
cars, trucks and buses.

Service Men— Meehan ics—
Trouble Shooters — here is the
one practical book you need.

Audels Auto Guide helps cut
down the time you spend look-
ing for trouble. Helps you get
to work right away on any
kind of job. Gives the latest
approved and best methods.

NEW FLUID DRIVE,
HYDRAULIC SHIFT
AND DIESELS COVERED

Drawings, Charts, Photos,
Diagrams make every point so
clear that you can do the
toughest kind of job.

Plainly written. Only by seeing a copy can you
realize just what the AUDELS AUTO GUIDE can
mean to you— in time and work saved.

ASK TO SEE A COPY!

KNOW YOUR CAR— convince yourself after you
see this approved book of recognized merit. No
other Trade Book like it! To get this assistance for
yourself— simply fill in and mail coupon TODAY.

I SEND N O HONEY- U5ETHE COUPON

Lubricants^ Lubrication Steering Gear
IgDitiou Systems — Coils Tires — Care— Repair

FOUR DOLLARS COMPLETE
1588 PAGES ^
AA 1500 ILLUSTRATIONS {

FLEXIBLE BOUND-HANDY SIZLw

I

| THEO. AUDEL & CO., 49 West 23rd Street, New York

I Please send me postpaid AUDELS AUTOMOBILE GUIDE
($4) for free examination. If 1 decide to keep it, I will send you SI

I witbin 7 days; then remit SI monthly until purchase price ol
$4 Is paid. Otherwise, 1 will return it to you promptly.

| Name_

I

AUDEL, PUBLISHERS, 49 W. 23rd Street, New York

, Employed by_

.JACK

Another scan

by

cape!736